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
Student Learning Targets
Christy Rush-Levine finds she has to rethink learning targets for her middle school students if she wants students to pursue complex and lifelong reading goals.
Rethinking Reading Goals
Maria Caplin develops a system for helping students move beyond simple goals like noting the number of pages read.
Book Blurbs in the Middle School Classroom
Jillian Heise uses the quirky genre of book blurbs in her middle school classroom to model summaries and glean information about students’ comprehension, reading interests, and writing skills.
Whole-Class Conversations for Read Aloud Closure
Melanie Swider discovers that conversations after read alouds are a wonderful way for students to remember and retain the learning from shared texts.
Percy Jackson Read-Aloud in Fourth Grade
Tony Keefer demonstrates how he makes his read-alouds interactive, and explains why he selected Percy Jackson to use with this group of fourth graders.
Weekly Check-In Sheets
Are you finding effort from students is flagging? Katherine Sokolowski develops check-in sheets as a way to lift student energy and reflection.
Notebook Sketching: Conferring with Sarah
Aimee Buckner confers with Sarah about sketching in her notebook.
Catching Up with Anna
Katie Doherty Czerwinski tackles the challenging issue of helping a student catch up in book clubs and reading workshop when they have missed a lot of class time.
The Secret to Magical Author Visits
Prolific children’s book author Laura Purdie Salas explains why you should treat visiting authors like rock stars, with many tips and examples from her writing friends.
Integrating Paraprofessionals into Reading Workshops
Justin Stygles decides he needs to completely rethink the role of classroom aides.
Digital Status of the Class
Maria Caplin explains how a digital status sheet saves minutes every week that add up to extra hours of instructional time over the year.
Making Time for Individual Conferences
Franki Sibberson explains how longer conferences early in the year pay dividends all year long.
Infographics and the Common Core: Resources and Standards
Andrea Smith explains why infographics are more useful than ever in the age of the Common Core, and provides many links to free infographic resources on the web.
Using Google Earth to Support Readers
Justin Stygles finds Google Earth is a marvelous tool for helping students research settings in novels.
Three Questions to Ask When a Guided Reading Group Is Stuck
Jan Burkins and Kim Yaris share three questions teachers should ask themselves when guided reading groups aren’t going well.
Frog and Toad and Tina and Maya: A Precocious Kindergarten Reading Group
Suzy Kaback ponders the precociousness of two kindergarten readers.
Blurring Genres and Real-Life Readers
The line between fiction and nonfiction can be fuzzy, but Tony Keefer finds what matters most is finding texts that captivate readers.
Exploring Literary Nonfiction with Middle School Students
Holly Mueller and her middle school students have fun exploring the creative aspects of literary nonfiction.
Using Lord of the Flies to Teach Argument
Gretchen Schroeder has suggestions for using short texts and close reading to help students comprehend The Lord of the Flies.
Kindergarten Small Group: Concepts of Print
Clare Landrigan leads a "quick and frequent" small group that integrates phonemic awareness activities with assessment.
Questions and Picture Books
Katie DiCesare suggests some mentor texts for fostering curiosity in young readers.
Picture Books or Beginning Readers?
Many beloved characters from picture books are showing up in beginning readers, and in the process can lose a lot of their appeal. Shari Frost provides teachers with criteria for choosing between picture books or beginning readers.
How to Get a Book to Catch Fire
If your goal is to get teens more excited about independent reading, Gretchen Schroeder has suggestions to help.
Explore: Time for Nonfiction
Andrea Smith uses Explore Time with her fourth graders to build interest in nonfiction.
Twitter in the Classroom
Katherine Sokolowski and her students find Twitter is an essential element in their fifth-grade reading workshop.
Choosing the Right Tool for Your Message
Julie Johnson has advice on classroom uses of tech resources.
Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover: Teaching Book Choice Strategies to Middle Schoolers
Katie Doherty helps students make choices for independent reading.
Running Record: Kaenon
Bitsy Parks completes a running record with first grader Kaenon.
Jillian’s Running Record
Bitsy Parks completes a running record with first grader Jillian. This is part of our new running records series.
Philanthropy and Literacy in Eighth Grade
Beth Honeycutt and Rita Schaeffer introduce a reading and writing activity to their eighth-grade students designed to help them understand philanthropy, using a video to enhance the lesson.
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