Choice Lit Topic: Reading Strategies
Are your students buried in post-its? Oversharing with those text-to-self connections? Parroting back comprehension tips but rarely applying them when they are actually reading? Our contributors sort through what works with strategy instruction, and have wise advice for avoiding superficial approaches to developing comprehension skills.
Results
The Chain
It seems like everywhere you turn these days there is a headline lamenting the collapse of reading. A National Endowment for the Arts blog post declared, “Federal Data on Reading...
Background Knowledge: More than Just Facts
It is impossible to not apply prior knowledge while reading. —Kelly Gallagher The term background knowledge was often heard in many of my college courses. I knew it was important,...
Reading Nonfiction: A Digital Anchor Chart
Tammy Mulligan uses a digital anchor chart to hold several steps to guide students while reading nonfiction text. Students tape a copy of the printed digital anchor chart into their...
Latest and Greatest Ways to Show Independent Reading Is Valued
Tara was recently moving her daughter's bedroom from downstairs, where she’s been for many years, to an upstairs bedroom. Although the room she moved to is larger, she wasn’t able...
Writing About Reading: A Search for Authenticity
I have a love/hate relationship with writing about reading. I have tried different ways to introduce and teach it to my students. But honestly, it always felt fake to me....
Quick and Easy Reading Responses
I look up during our first 10 minutes and see Andrew returning his very recently borrowed copy of They Called Us Enemy by George Takei. “Wow, Andrew, you finished that...
Morning Message Series: When and How
There is magic in the old and magic in the new. The trick is to successfully combine the two. —Adrienne Posey “There is magic in the old…” That’s why I...
My Teaching Toolbox (Part 2)
In Part 1 of this article, I introduced you to Mason and Isaac. You might remember they were each struggling in their own way with identifying the important events in...
Managing Your Students’ Independent Work During Guided Reading
“I know how to teach guided reading,” a second-grade veteran teacher commented to me. “It’s keeping the other students occupied that gets in the way.” We all know the numerous...
Tools to Support Our Youngest Readers
This PD2Go focuses on the importance of listening to students, especially when they have different answers.
Moving Beyond Asking Questions
If you have ever spent more than 1½ minutes in a kindergarten classroom or been on a car ride with a toddler, you know we don’t have to teach kids...
Literacy Tool Kits
Literacy Tool Kits For many years my students have had math tool kits—a plastic box full of manipulatives to use when completing math activities. These manipulatives have provided a way...
Read Aloud Magic
This is my most cherished time of the day. Gathered with students on the floor, I am sitting just above them on a stool so I can feel closer to...
Spoiler Alert: You Can Start Big to Go Small (Macbeth in One Class Period)
As the students walked into the classroom, I greeted them by handing each student a script: a 10-minute version of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The students settled into their seats, and I...
Cut-Apart Sentences in Small-Group Reading
Daine eagerly grabbed the book from my hand, excited to begin reading. Like the others in his guided reading group, he had been rapidly learning new high-frequency words, and his...
What Do You Meme: Logical Fallacies
These days, you would be hard pressed to find a person who doesn’t love a good meme. They seem to be everywhere, and you know they have infiltrated the culture...
Examining Book Choices with Awareness of Bias
“Mrs. Parks, they are wearing masks like us,” came a soft voice from my laptop. I paused to look at the thumbnail images of faces that filled my Zoom screen...
Digital Reading Strategies
I’ve tiptoed around using digital texts in my classroom, yet I read information digitally all the time—blogs, websites, and tweets. I tend to read more books on my e-reader than...
Lessons and Minilessons: What’s the Difference?
What is the difference between a lesson and a mini lesson? Minilessons are responsive to students by design. They can be planned for many purposes, to meet a variety of...
Pairing Video Clips with Text: The Great Depression
“How do we know that this is the true story? This is only one version of the story.” I absolutely love when my students question what they read. I love...
The Freewrite Pause
Sometimes you need to press pause to let everything sink in. Sebastian Vettel In the past, I would deliver a minilesson about a historical event to my seventh-grade social...
