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-Led Reading Seminars
Tammy Mulligan organizes her second graders to teach reading seminars to their peers. She outlines the steps to make this engaging practice a reality in any classroom.
Create-Your-Own Reading Challenge
Leigh Anne Eck encourages students to create their own reading challenges to stretch their reading identities. Download the challenge to share with your students.
Invitations to Reading a Variety of Genres
Katherine Sokolowski shares the genre invitations she issues to students to help them grow as readers.
Picture of the Week
Bitsy Parks shares a Picture of the Week routine that builds real-life literacy skills, and documents and celebrates important moments throughout the school year.
A Perfect Opportunity for Choice: Showing Theme
Tara Barnett outlines ways to offer choices for students to show their understandings of a book’s theme. Download a choice board and rubric.
Celebrating Reading Identities in the Elementary Classroom
Melissa Quimby offers a creative and practical idea to get to know students’ reading identities.
Adding Energy to the Classroom Library
Mandy Robek shares ways to reorganize and revamp your classroom library to energize students as readers.
Status of the Class for Readers and Writers
Matt Renwick reflects on the importance of building students’ identities as readers and writers and the power of a daily status of the class. Download a template to put this routine in place in your own classroom.
Honoring Student Choice in a Teacher-Chosen Text
Tara Barnett offers practical and engaging choices to students when reading a teacher-selected whole-class text. Download the reading choices survey and a sample pacing calendar to offer your students more choice during a whole-class read.
What Criteria Should We Use When Selecting Whole-Class Texts?
Christy Rush-Levine reminds us that text selection affects students. By shaping a unit of study to contain texts of varying formats and representing a wide variety of characters, students are empowered to develop their own ideas even while reading a whole-class text. Download a diverse text list to deepen a discussion of how family shapes identity.
Book Talk: Sheets and Delicates by Brenna Thummler
Christy Rush-Levine pairs Brenna Thummler’s books Sheets and Delicates in a book talk for her sixth-grade class.
Quick Take: Simple Classroom Library Organization
Christy Rush-Levine shares her simple system for organizing her massive classroom library.
Leading Students Toward Underused Sections of the Classroom Library
Gretchen Schroeder intentionally leads students to “jilted genres” in her classroom library.
The Seasons of Classroom Libraries
Melissa Quimby shifts her classroom library throughout the year so that as her students grow as readers, her library will continue to nourish them.
Expanding Book Choices for Secondary Readers
Ruth Ayres challenges us to be more open to the books that live in our secondary classroom libraries. She contends that committing to supporting choice in independent reading means rethinking some of the restrictions we put on adolescent readers.
A Case for Graphic Novels as “Real” Reading
Christy Rush-Levine makes a case for the robust nature of reading graphic novels. Included are two downloads: a classroom library permission slip and an initial reader’s notebook entry form.
The Classroom Library: Building Bridges
Cathy Mere presses to help children take the first steps in growing a sustainable reading life that carries beyond the classroom walls. She offers ways to build bridges to the school and public libraries as an essential step.
Guided Reading Part 3: Closure
This is the first guided reading group in September for Cheryl Miller. She concludes the lesson by having students share their understanding of the text and reviewing skills that were practiced. This is the final video in a three-part series.
Guided Reading Part 2: Whisper Reading and Instruction
This is the first guided reading group in September for Cheryl Miller. She continues the lesson by listening to the students whisper read and instructing them as needs arise. This is the second video in a three-part series.
How to Use Students’ Reading Logs as a Formative Literacy Assessment
Matt Renwick reminds us that there is a lot of information available in our classrooms that can inform instruction. Some of it is “hiding in plain sight,” for example reading logs.
Learning to Notice and Analyze Complexities
Gretchen Schroeder supports her high school students to think deeply about the complexities around them, beginning with themselves and pop culture, and then moving to the texts they are reading.
Finding Time for Read Aloud
Katherine Sokolowski makes a case for the importance of reading aloud to secondary students and offers suggestions to make it a reality. She includes a list of five surefire read aloud books for middle school students.
Picture Books to Teach Conflict
Katherine Sokolowski shares a book list that inspires her to teach five different kinds of conflict.
Quick Take: Share Your Reading Struggles
Instructional coach Staci Revere reminds us of the importance of modeling our own reading lives for students, especially the parts where we struggle as readers.
Four Keys to Making Workshop Work
Bitsy Parks reminds us of four key components of running a workshop and offers advice for making workshop work.
One Instructional Strategy Changes a Reading Community: Status of the Class
Mandy Robek reminds us of the power of a status of the class to build a reading community.
Making Time to Listen to Your Readers
Angie Miller reminds us of the importance of making time to listen to student readers so we can make enrichment and instructional adjustments.
Three Meaningful Ways to Incorporate Drawing into English Class
Gretchen Schroeder shares three meaningful ways to incorporate drawing into her high school English classes, and the purpose behind each strategy.
Four Tools for Hosting Online Book Clubs
Matt Renwick leads us to design book clubs where students can continue to grow and connect as readers in online discussions.
Finding Reliable Digital Reading Resources
Cathy Mere shares how to find reliable digital reading resources to pair with print materials to provide strong opportunities for student learning.
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