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
Teaching Stamina Strategies to First Graders
Tammy Mulligan works with two seven-year-olds to teach them strategies for building reading stamina.
Sharon Taberski on Comprehension Instruction (PODCAST)
In this podcast, Sharon Taberski chats with Franki Sibberson about comprehension instruction across the grades. You can read Sharon's blog, All About Comprehension, at this link: http://allaboutcomprehension.blogspot.com/ A full transcript...
Using Animated Short Films to Teach Inference
My students and I have just finished reading "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin, a staple short story in the literary canon of the high school English curriculum. The story...
Connecting Students, Wall Charts, and Reading
In this conference with third-grade student Jeffrey, Beth Lawson helps this young reader think through the importance of developing stamina to get through the first 50 pages of a book....
Digging Deeper with Rereading
In this video from Katie DiCesare's first-grade classroom, Katie uses the strategy of rereading to help students look more closely at words—in this case, words that rhyme.
Book Clubs: Setting the Stage with Conferring
It was an exciting time in Room 10's readers' workshop. The third graders I worked with over the past year were making the transition from thumbing through beginning chapter books...
Clearing Up Confusion
Brian needed a change. He had been voraciously reading graphic novels since school began two months ago, and I had been wondering when to start nudging him to change it...
Teaching Students Retelling Strategies
As we meet with teachers around New England to analyze various assessment data (Dynamic Reading Assessments, conference notes, running records, and informal retellings), we notice a pattern -- retelling the...
Next Steps: Thinking about Retelling During Reading
To demonstrate retelling skills, we model keeping in mind story elements as students determine what will be important for retelling. In a minilesson, we use a book we've already read...
Ready-to-Go Readers’ Theater Books
Are you caught up in the "fluency frenzy"? Since the National Reading Panel's report in 2000, fluency has gotten a lot of attention. The good news is that there has...
Towards Thoughtful Strategy Instruction
I think it's about to happen again. Education is famous for wide swings of the pendulum. From code emphasis to meaning emphasis, from whole class to small group . ....
Books for Strategy Studies
I love finding new texts for the classroom. When I read new-to-me books, I often imagine the faces of young learners from past classes reading with me. A time-tested favorite...
Just Because It’s Skinny, Doesn’t Mean It’s Easy: Matching Books to Transitional Readers in Grades 2-4
I buy a LOT of books for my classroom library. But, there are also many books that I won't buy! My husband has a lot of trouble believing I reject...
Using Poetry to Promote Reading Fluency
Poetry invites rereading. Because poems tend to be short and to the point, children enjoy poetry much more than we may think. Old Elm Speaks by Kristine O'Connell George is...
Build Fluency with Books That Are Fun for Kids to Read Aloud Over and Over and Over Again
Fluency has been such a hot topic lately. Our students are tested and timed on passages to check their reading progress. There is so much to fluency, but it has...
Wide Open Spaces: Learning from “Not-Just-Right” Books
Every mother can relate to this maternal wisdom: The car is a perfect place for insightful conversations with your child. When my seven year old waits to share exciting news,...
Selecting Texts for Strategy Teaching with English Language Learners in Mind
Over the past several months we have spent time thinking and teaching with a group of educators whose students are predominantly English language learners (ELLs). During our visits to their...
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...
First Grade Small Group: Chunking
In this small group from Courtney Tomfohr's first-grade classroom, students work on their chunking skills. Courtney begins the lesson with a whiteboard, moves to authentic text, and gives children a...
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. Clare helps the student pull...
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.
