Choice Lit Topic: 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.
Results
Student-Led Minilesson: Connecting Facts from Different Sources
Lucas leads a minilesson in Franki Sibberson's fifth-grade class on connecting facts from different sources.
Expanding Black History Month Reading
It’s easy to tell when it’s Black History Month. Every classroom has a display of favorite read aloud books featuring African Americans. Children can look forward to hearing them during...
History Through a Child’s Eyes: Conferring with Omar
Christy Rush-Levine confers with Omar, who is reading The Rock and the River. The book is a fictional account of a tumultuous time in civil rights history, considering protests through...
Russell Freedman Book Clubs
I love the idea of having all my students read the same book and discuss it. The shared interest and excitement that comes from having book clubs in the classroom...
Balancing Whole-Class and Independent Reading in Middle School
The choice between whole-class novels and independent reading can be a false one in many middle school classrooms. Katie Doherty's sixth graders discuss their reading together of a novel in...
Reading Conference: Keeping Track of Characters
Christy Rush-Levine refers back to a previous reading response to help eighth grader Edith track changes in characters' relationships in Room, the novel she is reading.
Annotating While Reading
an·no·tate VERB annotates (third person present) · annotated (past tense) · annotated (past participle) · annotating (present participle) add notes to (a text or diagram) giving explanation or comment. (Definition from the Oxford Dictionary) My students annotate...
What Does It Mean to Read?
It was late fall, and I was sitting in our reading reflection circle listening to my students share their thinking with the group. “I read 35 pages,” said Luke. Not...
Reader Response as an Entry to Conferring
“How often do you confer with readers?” I get asked this question a lot. In fact, I work with a close friend of mine who, before I can answer that...
Three Challenges for the 40 Book Challenge
It’s interesting what gets adopted widely in education. Growth mind-set, for example, is almost an industry, with workbooks, posters, and computer software all designed to instill resilience in students. Yet...
Levels and What’s Appropriate
“How do you know they are reading books at their level?” the visitor asked. This is the question I hear the most often from visitors to my classroom, students in...
Guided Reading Run Amok
“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” said Sharice. “I plan, reflect, and read. I watch videos on YouTube and Edutopia. I even tried filming myself and watching the videos....
First-Grade Reading Share: Focus on Conferring and Strategies
Bitsy Parks uses reading share time early in the year to describe and summarize the work in two conferences to help students learn how conferring, independent reading time, and strategy...
Organizing for Middle School
Ask any middle school teacher what they hope to accomplish with their students every year, and you will likely find “organization” somewhere in their top five choices. Ask a sixth-grade...
Keeping the Classroom Library Current
If you walk past my room on many days during my planning period, you will see me standing in front of the shelves, pondering. Those are the days when I’ve...
Fifth-Grade Book Talk: Wish Girl
Katherine Sokolowski builds interest in a new book in the classroom library through a book talk on Wish Girl.
How to Get Books Off Shelves
My eighth-grade classroom walls are lined with bookshelves. At the start of each school year, each shelf is packed with books. Throughout the school year I inevitably add to my...
When One Door Closes
I remember an undergraduate professor of mine saying that it takes five years of teaching before you really know what you’re doing. This statement was both reassuring and scary. Reassuring...
First-Grade Read and Think Check-In
Katrina Edwards demonstrates a read and think check-in from her first-grade classroom.
Invitations vs. Accountability
My reading life is full of invitations. A friend recommends a book. I get invited into a book club. I see an announcement for the next #titletalk Twitter chat in...
The Year’s First Read Aloud
Reading changes your life. Reading unlocks worlds unknown or forgotten, taking travelers around the world and through time. Reading helps you escape the confines of school and pursue your own...
