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
Middle School Readers at Mid-Year (SURVEY TEMPLATE)
Katie Doherty finds surveys of student reading habits and preferences are really useful in the winter, after she knows her students and they’ve settled into a routine.
Teaching Themes Through Keywords
Aimee Buckner presents a simple strategy for helping students look for themes as they read a new text.
Picture Books About Books: Young Learners and Reading Identity
Katie DiCesare gathers picture books to talk with her first graders about everything from reading identity to the proper care of books in the classroom library.
Nonfiction Books for Independent Reading: Moving Beyond Content Connections (BOOKLIST)
Franki Sibberson explains how she boosted the amount of nonfiction texts her grades 4 and 5 students were choosing for independent reading by focusing more on interest than on content connections.
Strong Girls (BOOKLIST)
If Nancy Drew was an important literary role model for you when you were a preteen, you might enjoy a peek at the sassy new gals who are influencing our tweens.
An Assessment Notebook That Works for Me
After lots of trial and error, Franki Sibberson finally has a format for her assessment notebook that works well.
Short Units, Big Messages
Those "in-between" writers in grades 3 and 4 present special challenges to teachers. Some are fluent and versatile, writing page after page of drafts. Other students struggle to craft even a sentence. Franki Sibberson explains how short texts and brief genre units can help intermediate writers with a wide range of abilities.
Staying True to Our Beliefs When Working With Struggling Readers and Writers in Grades 3-6
Franki Sibberson writes about the challenges of holding true to our beliefs in working with struggling readers, and shares the questions she asks herself as a way of self-monitoring her teaching with strugglers.
Fitness Boot Camp Helps Me Understand Struggling Readers
Franki Sibberson finishes 29th out of 30 participants in her fitness bootcamp mile run. In the process, she learns many lessons about herself and the needs of struggling learners in her classroom.
Weekend Headlines: Whole Class Share
In this final installment of a three-part video series, Katie Doherty and her sixth-grade students continue the Weekend Headlines activity. In this installment, students share their writing with the whole class and respond.
Making Predictions and Finding Evidence in Text
In this video from a fifth-grade small group, Clare Landrigan talks with students about making predictions and finding evidence in text.
Many Languages, Many Texts: Book Time in Preschool
In this brief video, Melissa Kolb explains "Book Time" in her preschool class. It's a time when many volunteers read books informally to small groups of children in their home languages.
The Books We Can’t Live Without in Our Teaching: Resource Round-Up
Literacy experts share their well-loved and well-worn children's and professional books.
Old Elm Speaks Conclusion: Connecting Poetry, Observation, and Reading
In this second installment of a three-part video series, Aimee Buckner shows how observation skills, poetry, and reading instruction come together with the mentor text Old Elm Speaks by Kristin O'Connell George. In this final excerpt, students share what they wrote after browsing the book and completing some observations.
“If You Like Matt Christopher” Student Book Share
In this video from Franki Sibberson’s grades 3-4 classroom, boys share books that are similar to ones written by Matt Christopher.
Envisioning Writing: Wow Words and Mental Images in 1st Grade
In this minilesson, Katie DiCesare uses the book My Cat Copies Me to help her first-grade students “envision” their writing drafts. The lesson focuses on creating mental images to conjure stronger verbs and adjectives while writing.
First Grade Small Group: Chunking
In this small group from Courtney Tomfohr's first-grade classroom, students work on their "chunking" skills.
Conferring with Colin
In this reading conference with Colin, Joan Moser (of “The Sisters”) helps him set a goal of working on accuracy.
Open Book Clubs
Shari Frost shares the nuts and bolts of setting up open book clubs in your school. These clubs are a great way to expand the reading community, as well as connect school libraries and classrooms.
Demonstration Lesson: Inferring Character Traits
In this demonstration lesson from a 5th grade classroom, Clare Landrigan leads students through a reading and discussion of inference and character development.
What Are Reading Centers?
Kathy Collins gives a detailed definition of how reading centers are connected to the goals of different reading units of study.
Conferring About Character Traits
In this conference from a fifth-grade classroom, Clare Landrigan meets with a student to reinforce learning from a whole-class lesson on inferring and character traits.
Multicultural Picture Books for Young Children
These books do double duty – building community and understanding of the sounds of language.
Small Group After Demonstration Lesson
In this small group after a demonstration lesson in a 5th grade classroom, Clare Landrigan talks through strategies for inferring the meaning of new words while reading.
Giving New Readers a Diet of More Than Leveled Books
Franki Sibberson contemplates which diet plan she’ll try this month, and that leads her to think about what a steady “diet” of leveled books does for young readers.
Picking a Partner: Demonstration Lesson and Debrief
In this demonstration lesson from a K-2 classroom, Joan Moser leads students through guided practice in picking a partner.
Student Reading Interview: Assessing Ana Part 2
This is the second video in a two-part series. Principal Karen Szymusiak interviewed Ana, a second grader, to learn more about her strengths and needs as a reader. In this week’s installment, Karen will share her findings with Ana’s teacher.
Worth a Thousand Words: Teaching with Wordless Picture Books
Shari Frost and her literacy coaching colleagues explore together how wordless picture books can change the landscape of literacy teaching in K-6 classrooms throughout a school.
Where Have All the Picture Books Gone?
Franki Sibberson shares ways to foster continued enjoyment of picture books with intermediate readers, and highlights some texts with special appeal for older readers in this article which includes a booklist.
Preparing Students for Summer Reading
Franki Sibberson has some great suggestions for jumpstarting students’ summer reading. These ideas work if you are in the last week or two of school, or if you are just beginning a summer enrichment reading program with kids.
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