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
Using Reading Notebook Covers for Reflection and Goal Setting
Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan are using reading notebook covers in ingenious ways.
Data That Matters
What information is gathered by a teacher sitting in a rocking chair quietly watching her students? Christy Rush-Levine discovers it is plenty.
Staying True to Best Practices with Required Resources
Are you required to use a reading or writing program that goes against your beliefs about teaching and learning? Gigi McAllister has suggestions for holding onto your beliefs and sanity.
Conferring with Boys in Sixth Grade
Katie Doherty confers with boys in her sixth-grade reading workshop. This is the second installment in a two-part video series.
Conferring with Boys in Middle School
Katie Doherty circulates among sixth-grade boys in her reading workshop. These quick conferences and conferring tips are the first installment in a two-part series.
Speed Dating Books
Carly Ullmer presents a fun activity for introducing teens to new books and each other as readers, capitalizing on their interests.
Just Reading?
Christy Rush-Levine challenges the notion that there is anything easy or natural about getting young teens to select and read books independently in classrooms.
Doodlebug
What makes a teacher memorable? Recognizing a child's passions from the very first day of school. Jennifer Schwanke recounts how her second-grade teacher did just that.
Reading Workshop Routines in First Grade
Bitsy Parks explains the routines and procedures in her first-grade reading workshop.
Read Alouds as “Third Things”
Katherine Sokolowski uses read alouds early in the year to help students reflect on how to be kind and thoughtful members of a classroom community.
Bring Back Read Aloud
Jennifer Schwanke interviews older students and discovers their most beloved memories of elementary school involve read alouds.
Strategies for Using Reader’s Notebooks
Melanie Swider enhances read alouds and the entire reading workshop with creative uses for reading notebooks.
Fourth-Grade Read Aloud: Checking In
In this video from a fourth-grade classroom, Gi Reed reads aloud Small as an Elephant by Jennifer Richard Jacobson. Gi continually checks in with her students, making sure they are visualizing, noticing new vocabulary, and making connections to earlier incidents in the texts—all without breaking the flow of the story.
Using a Strategy Card in a Reading Conference
Deb Gaby confers with second grader Reagan early in the school year. She is reading her first chapter book, and using a reading strategies “tool kit” for support.
Anchoring Language
Katie DiCesare thinks about what language supports student independence early in the year and how to share this in an anchor chart with her first graders.
Book Clubs Then and Now: Change Is the Constant
Mary Lee Hahn considers how book clubs have changed over time in her fifth-grade classroom.
Getting to Know a Young Reader
As she confers with first grader Kendall, Deb Gaby skillfully weaves questions about home and reading together.
Provoking Young Readers
Melanie Meehan finds read aloud is a great time for children to connect opinions and experiences.
Questioning Questions: Rethinking Prompts for Reading Conferences
Jan Burkins and Kim Yaris are rethinking questions used in one-on-one reading conferences.
Digital Literacy Workshop
Maria Caplin has suggestions for making transitions to digital literacy in reading and writing workshops.
Ralph Fletcher on Mentor Texts (PODCAST)
If you’re spending some time sifting through new books and thinking about teaching with them, you’ll enjoy this podcast with Ralph Fletcher.
Donalyn Miller on Modeling Literate Lives (PODCAST)
Donalyn Miller, author of the acclaimed bestseller The Book Whisperer
The Power of Charts in the Classroom
Melanie Swider shares suggestions for making anchor charts more purposeful.
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?
Gretchen Schroeder finds the classic dinner party assignment is a fun way for her high school students to explore kindred spirits in literature late in the school year.
Student-Created Text Sets
Jillian Heise’s middle school students design text sets late in the school year. It’s a great activity for discovering how they have grown as readers, as well as a gift to next year’s class.
Owl Research Notes Group
Andrea Smith helps a group of boys take notes during an owl research project.
Big Idea: First-Grade Lesson
Bitsy Parks introduces her first graders to the concept of theme.
Favorite Wordless Picture Books for Teaching Inference
Jan Burkins and Kim Yaris present some of their favorite children’s books for teaching inference.
Working Hard and Reading Carefully: On Theme and Rereading
Jennifer Allen uses commercials to promote the importance of rereading to students while teaching theme.
Redefining Just-Right Books
Jan Burkins and Kim Yaris share advice for rethinking how teachers and students define “just-right” texts.
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