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
Fourth-Grade Read Aloud: Checking In
In this video from a fourth-grade classroom, Gi Reed reads aloud Small as an Elephant by Jennifer Richard Jacobson. Notice how Gi continually checks in with her students, making sure...
Using a Strategy Card in a Reading Conference
Deb Gaby confers with second grader Reagan early in the school year. She is reading her first chapter book, and using a reading strategies "tool kit" for support.
Anchoring Language
By learning you will teach, by teaching you will learn. Latin Proverb This spring I walked back into my classroom after being out the day before at a professional...
Book Clubs Then and Now: Change Is the Constant
I am a book club junkie. I believe that the desire to get together and talk about books is a natural offshoot of being a reader. I belong to two...
Getting to Know a Young Reader
Deb Gaby confers with Kendall early in the school year, artfully mixing conversation with assessment of reading skills and preferences.
Provoking Young Readers
Since attending a Teachers College workshop a few years ago, Shanna Schwartz's suggestion to be provocative with young opinion writers has stuck with me. When one of our second-grade teachers...
Questioning Questions: Rethinking Prompts for Reading Conferences
Reading conferences are an important part of the teacher’s work during independent reading. The conversations we have with students during this time are meant to provide us with valuable information...
Digital Literacy Workshop
Pencil vs. typing. Writer’s notebook vs. Word document. Paper book vs. Kindle. Realizing it is not about the pencil, app, or an Internet address is the first step in transitioning...
Ralph Fletcher on Mentor Texts (PODCAST)
Ralph Fletcher's status as a writer and teacher is legendary in elementary schools. He is the author of many books for teachers and children. In this podcast, Ralph and Franki...
Donalyn Miller on Modeling Literate Lives (PODCAST)
Donalyn Miller, author of the acclaimed bestseller The Book Whisperer, chats with Franki Sibberson about the importance of teachers modeling their literate lives for students. You can visit Donalyn's blog at:...
The Power of Charts in the Classroom
I love creating charts with students each year during read-alouds, minilessons, and discussions. In my classroom, you will never see charts that are laminated, store-bought, or faded from previous years....
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?
The other night, I watched the final episode of Mad Men, and even though the characters came out with mostly happy endings, I cried. I cried because I had been...
Student-Created Text Sets
My students are readers. For at least the two years they are in my classroom for seventh and eighth grade, a time in adolescence when research shows a decrease in...
Owl Research Notes Group
Andrea Smith helps a group of boys completing their note taking during an owl research project.
Big Idea: First-Grade Lesson
Bitsy Parks introduces her first graders to the concept of theme.
Favorite Wordless Picture Books for Teaching Inference
When children are first learning to read, figuring out the alphabetic system is often so taxing that grappling with letters and sounds relegates meaning to the back burner. Although we...
Working Hard and Reading Carefully: On Theme and Rereading
I can accept failure—everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying. Michael Jordan How long do you have to watch Michael Jordan playing basketball before you realize...
Redefining Just-Right Books
Recently a friend, Clara, who is a retired literacy coach, told us a story about a visit to her first-grade grandson Trevor’s classroom. With a long face, she explained that...
Student Learning Targets
I recently came across this comic from Baldo by Cantú and Castellanos via a family member whose hobbies include archery. In the comic, a young girl is using a bow...
Rethinking Reading Goals
This fall, my students' reading goals typically included sentences such as these: I want to read more minutes. I want to read more pages. I want to read a different...
Book Blurbs in the Middle School Classroom
We’ve all seen them when we are browsing for a book. They are those little words on the cover of a book with praise from another author. They are thoughts,...
