Teaching Reading
Our contributors lead reading workshops in classrooms with creative flair. Over the past 12 years, we've filled our site with loads of suggestions, tools, and tips for using engaging books throughout the curriculum to hook kids on reading. Here is where you will find many stories of successful and not-so-successful workshop days, and what we learned from them. We bring these stories to life through hundreds of video examples.
Latest Content
The Compliment Conference
Katrina Edwards confers with Camilla, a struggling reader. She is a child who has no confidence in herself. The Compliment Conference is a way to acknowledge and build upon Camilla’s strengths, and boost her self-esteem at the same time.
Time for What Matters
Gretchen Schroeder has only 42 minutes with her high school students each day. She explains how she establishes priorities.
Kindergarten Reading Conference: Building Confidence
Mandy Robek finds that kindergartner Mikey is lost in knowing how to use his time well during reading workshop. Her conference moves him from deflated to inspired.
Extended Inquiry with Article of the Week
Gretchen Schroeder finds the article of the week activity is an excellent vehicle for learning about content literacy gaps in student background knowledge and how to fill them.
The Intersection of Social Studies and Language Arts
Melanie Meehan writes about how teachers in her state are dealing with the time-crunch issue in social studies instruction by naturally integrating more social studies into the language arts program.
Understanding Character Traits: Part 3
Jason DiCarlo completes his lesson on character traits in third grade. This is the final installment in a three-part series.
Owl Research Brainstorming: Partner Work
Andrea Smith’s fourth graders are working on an Owl Research project that integrates reading, writing, talking, listening, and content literacy.
Understanding Character Traits: Part 2
Jason DiCarlo continues his third-grade reading workshop lesson on character traits with a mentor text. This is the second video in a three-part series.
Getting Mentor Texts in Students’ Hands
Jillian Heise discovers that her students need more access to the mentor texts she reads aloud, so she develops strategies to get them to students.
Alternatives to Home/School Reading Logs
There may be few literacy homework assignments more despised by families than the dreaded reading log. Gigi McAllister proposes some alternatives, and explains how she keeps families in the loop on reading progress.
Stamina Bubbles
“Why do you always say ‘Happy reading!’ to us?” This question from a first grader leads Katrina Edwards to develop visual support tools for building stamina during reading workshops.
Conferring with Jeri in Kindergarten
Mandy Robek demonstrates the strategies of teach, prompt, and reinforce when conferring with kindergartner Jeri.
Back to Basics: Choice
Ruth Ayres explores the boundaries of student options in writing workshops.
Reading Pictures in High School
Gretchen Schroeder melds famous artwork with literacy instruction in her high school classroom.
Using Webcomics in Classrooms
Katherine Sokolowski explains why she uses webcomics in her literacy workshops, and shares an extensive list of her favorite online sources.
Visual Reading for Writing
Carly Ulmer uses visual literacy to build writing skills with her seventh graders through two powerful minilessons.
Close Reading for Comparison in Fifth Grade
Katherine Sokolowski uses a fascinating picture book to build close reading skills with her fifth graders. The key is selecting a text that holds up well through multiple readings.
Beginning a Novel with Close Reading
Aimee Buckner helps a fourth-grade boy tease out emerging themes in the first pages of the novel Morning Girl.
“Are We Gonna Watch the Movie?”
Gretchen Schroeder finds her high school students are always eager to see the movies related to the novels they are reading in class. Yet it rarely makes sense to show the entire film. She explains how to choose clips judiciously.
Embracing Standards in Creative Ways
Christy Rush-Levine makes links between standards, video clips, and close reading.
Mid-Workshop Conversations
Stella Villalba finds mid-workshop conversations are a terrific routine to add to literacy workshops to promote growth, especially for English language learners.
Little Levels, Big Thinking
Katie DiCesare moves beyond levels to consider her first-grade readers’ needs.
Reading, Engagement, and Kidwatching
Katrina Edwards looked around her first-grade reading workshop one day in winter and it wasn’t a pretty picture. Many students were doing anything but reading. She develops a plan to approach the issue of time on task thoughtfully.
Unstable Labels: Stop the Race to Z
Jan Burkins and Kim Yaris consider the insignificance of what levels convey about young readers.
Nonfiction Books with More Than One Entry Point
Franki Sibberson shares some of her favorite nonfiction books with more than one entry point.
Nonfiction Scrapbooks
Justin Stygles finds Nonfiction Scrapbooks are a fun way for his fifth-grade students to explore their reading interests and artistic talents with the classroom community.
Understanding Fiction and Nonfiction in First Grade
This is a demonstration lesson in a first-grade classroom on understanding the difference between fiction and nonfiction led by Erin Quealy. It is the first video in a three-part series.
Grouping Strategies for Guided Reading
How can you support the “outliers” in classrooms — students with unique needs or profiles who don’t neatly fit into any instructional group? Shari Frost offers some strategies.
Second-Grade Reading Group
Heather Rader demonstrates the importance of a varied reading diet to a second-grade group, sharing her own stack of books.
Beyond Explicit Instruction: What Do Struggling Readers Need?
Franki Sibberson explores the varied needs of young readers and writers.
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