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
Running Records: Rationale and Procedure
Bitsy Parks explains her procedures for completing running records in her first-grade classroom. This is the first installment in a video series on running records.
Reading Workshop in Kindergarten: When and How to Launch
Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan share wise advice about launching workshops in kindergarten.
Shallow Books? Learning from a Reading Celebration
Franki Sibberson discovers we allow students to assess what reading matters most to them, we can learn a remarkable amount.
Learning to Observe: Inviting a Parent to a Tutoring Session
Max Brand brings a mother into the assessment process and teaches her what to observe as her child reads.
Multicultural Series Books
Shari Frost is alarmed when she realizes how rarely children of color are represented as main characters in book series. She decides to compile a list of multicultural series books.
Character Traits and Vocabulary Development
Gigi McAllister shares how she combines vocabulary instruction with analysis of character traits in her fourth-grade classroom.
Conferring About Characters in First Grade
Katie DiCesare confers with Vidhi about the main character in her independent reading book.
Slow Thinkers
Gigi McAllister realizes she is a slow thinker, and this makes her reconsider some of her classroom practices to support children who need more time to respond.
Supporting Introverts in Literacy Workshops
Kim Campbell has suggestions for ways teachers can help introverts have more say in literacy workshops.
The Silent Period
Do you have English language learners in the silent period in your school? Stella Villalba has tips for teachers working with them.
Shorter Research Projects: Rethinking Notetaking Strategies
Katherine Sokolowski is assigning shorter research projects in her fifth-grade classroom as a way to help students acquire notetaking skills and understand the boundaries of plagiarism.
Inform, Inspire, Instruct: Essays as Mentor Texts in High School
Kim Campbell shares her favorite nonfiction short texts to use with adolescents.
Whole Class Partner Share Session in First Grade
Katie DiCesare leads her first graders in a reading share session during a character traits unit.
The Power of Reading Habits
Gretchen Taylor’s overscheduled middle school students have almost no time for reading outside the classroom. She finds that some reflective inquiry helps them build reading habits at home.
Helping Parents Talk with Students
Helping parents learn to talk with their children about what’s going on in the classroom may be more valuable than any homework teachers assign. Max Brand shares some practical tips and prompts he gives to families to launch conversations at the dinner table or in the car.
Student-Generated Blends Chart in First Grade
Katie DiCesare’s first graders add to a blends chart during reading transition time.
Close Reading and Multiple Layers in Middle School
Christy Rush-Levine uses striking texts that inspire multiple readings by her middle school students.
Using Close Reading to Analyze Propaganda
Propaganda, word clouds, and close reading engage students in Holly Mueller’s sixth-grade class.
“Lift a Line” Boys Reading Group
Franki Sibberson gives a group of boys a “lift a line” assignment to build their close reading skills.
Can Books Harm Children? Support and Censorship
Shari Frost asks a provocative question: Can books harm children? She explores practical ways for teachers to walk the fine line between support and censorship in matching books to students.
Top 10 Intermediate Books for Boys
Katherine Sokolowski finds many of the boys in her classroom love to read about violence, weapons, and crude humor. She challenges teachers to appreciate boys’ interests and set some of our own criticism aside.
Jumping Off the Buzz Wagon: The Value of Reading Logs
Are you ready to ditch your reading logs? Not so fast. Franki Sibberson explains why she still uses them in her third-grade classroom.
Reader Response: Keeping It Real
Cathy Mere finds many authentic ways for her first graders to share reading insights.
Fluency and Comprehension Conference
Aimee Buckner confers with fourth grader Amanda about her reading comprehension and fluency, encouraging her to use a sticky note to track thinking around a focus question.
Reading Passports
Justin Stygles develops reading passports as an alternative to traditional reading logs with his fifth- and sixth-grade students.
Books for Studying Illustration with First Graders
Katie DiCesare has suggestions for books to support an illustration unit early in the year.
Reader Response in the Digital Age
Franki Sibberson has suggestions for moving to more digital response options with students.
Digital Boards for Formative Assessment
Katharine Hale has moved much of her reading response to digital boards, which are also a useful tool for formative assessment.
Books for Brain Breaks
Mandy Robek compiles a list of her favorite books for brain breaks with young learners.
A Strong Foundation: Books and Media for Launching Literacy Workshops
Help students transition back to school with minilessons that give children a strong sense of the purpose of literacy workshops.
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