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
Unstable Labels: Stop the Race to Z
One evening at a family dinner at the end of the school year, Kim sat next to her sister-in-law, who nodded toward her five-year-old son sitting across from her at...
Little Levels, Big Thinking
I’m teaching first grade after a year in third grade. It was such a good learning year for me. I realized that lots of books that work in first grade...
Reading, Engagement, and Kidwatching
I looked up from my reading conference with Jordan to see that David was building a mighty impressive book fort, Mateo and Tucker were exchanging Lego figures behind books, Jasmine...
Nonfiction Books with More Than One Entry Point
My third graders love facts and information. Often their nonfiction reading lives consist of books that share lots of facts and isolated information about topics they love. I want to...
Nonfiction Scrapbooks
This year, my sixth graders will be expanding on an idea we began last year. We’re going old school with scrapbooking! We will be scrapbooking with short text, such as...
Understanding Fiction and Nonfiction in First Grade
This is a demonstration lesson in a first-grade classroom on understanding the difference between fiction and nonfiction led by Erin Quealy. It is the first video in a three-part series....
Grouping Strategies for Guided Reading
“My guided reading fantasy is that my whole class falls into nice, neat groups of four to six kids at the same reading level,” sighed Brianne as we looked over...
Second-Grade Reading Group
Heather Rader leads a second-grade small group on reading strategies.
Beyond Explicit Instruction: What Do Struggling Readers Need?
Struggling readers need precisely what good readers receive—lots of high-success reading experiences. Richard Allington I’m not a fan of the words struggling reader. But in using them here, I...
Using Reading Notebook Covers for Reflection and Goal Setting
When you walk into grade 3-6 classrooms during writing workshop, the covers of writing notebooks are often filled with photos, images, and quotes that remind young writers of stories in...
Data That Matters
On the first day of my internship with Nancie Atwell at the Center for Teaching and Learning in Edgecomb, Maine, I sat eagerly with my spiral-bound notebook, poised to record...
Staying True to Best Practices with Required Resources
In recent years many districts have turned away from teacher autonomy in literacy instruction and toward reading or writing programs. The reasons for this shift are varied. Some think that...
Conferring with Boys in Sixth Grade
Katie Doherty confers with boys in her sixth-grade reading workshop. This is the second installment in a two-part video series.
Speed Dating Books
I come back from lunch to join my second block of students, whom I always greet with “Did everyone have a good lunch?" There are the usual grumblings about the...
Just Reading?
A colleague recently said to me, “My seventh graders never just read. Every time they pick up a book, they have an activity to do.” Following up, I uncovered that...
Conferring with Boys in Middle School
Katie Doherty circulates for quick conferences with boys about their independent reading in her sixth-grade classroom.
Doodlebug
Mrs. Cox was my second-grade teacher. Tall and lean, she had a wide grin and a crazy mess of bright red hair that matched a smattering of freckles all over...
Reading Workshop Routines in First Grade
Bitsy Parks explains the routines and procedures in her first-grade reading workshop.
Read Alouds as “Third Things”
Many things are unpredictable each day in our classroom, but one thing my students can count on is that they will be read to every single day. I read aloud...
Bring Back Read Aloud
Recently, I met with a group of middle school students, hoping to get some input to help me plan a professional-development class for teachers. When I first met them, I...
Strategies for Using Reader’s Notebooks
I love read alouds, modeling ways to write about reading, and having conversations with students about books. I am an avid reader of children’s books and thrive on spreading the...
