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
Helping Parents Talk with Students
My educational work as a tutor brings me into contact with parents. These are parents with children who struggle, and literacy learning is a challenge. I am entrusted to intervene...
Student-Generated Blends Chart in First Grade
At the start of each year, my first-grade students and I often sit down together near our chart stand to practice interactive writing. They sit clumped on the floor with...
Close Reading and Multiple Layers in Middle School
My eighth-grade students read to master literacy standards. Though this goal is always on my mind, I prefer for my students to forget they are reading as a means of...
Using Close Reading to Analyze Propaganda
Dystopian literature was wildly popular in my sixth-grade classroom last year, and I anticipate it will continue to be, so I decided to capture that enthusiasm and build a unit...
“Lift a Line” Boys Reading Group
Franki Sibberson gives a group of boys a "lift a line" assignment to build their close reading skills.
Can Books Harm Children? Support and Censorship
I recently read a blog entry written by a young adult author, Andrew Smith. He told of enduring a negative media storm around his book Marbury Lens. Responders believed that “harm...
Top 10 Intermediate Books for Boys
Two years ago I stood side by side with a student, glancing over the shelves of books in my classroom. Matt was, by his own definition, a nonreader. He knew...
Reader Response: Keeping It Real
The music starts in our first-grade classroom and kids begin to sign out of their computers, put books away, and select the ones they want to share. Everyone begins to...
Jumping Off the Buzz Wagon: The Value of Reading Logs
During a recent workshop I was leading, a teacher came up to me shocked that I had shared a student reading log in one of my slides. She sounded confused...
Fluency and Comprehension Conference
In this brief conference, Aimee Buckner confers with Amanda about her fluency and comprehension.
Reading Passports
Has the traditional reading log run its course in your classroom? I have found that by the intermediate grades, the typical nightly reading log no longer has a useful purpose...
Books for Studying Illustration with First Graders
After many weeks of helping students get acquainted with the routines in writing workshop, I am excited to begin our first study. With such young writers, the notion of study...
Reader Response in the Digital Age
I recently finished the book We Were Liars by E. Lockhart. It is an amazing young adult novel with an ending that begs to be discussed. I knew I couldn’t...
Digital Boards for Formative Assessment
Formative assessment drives instruction. Without it, we would have no idea what to teach to whom we are teaching. However, with grades and standardized tests bombarding our classrooms, I find...
Books for Brain Breaks
The bathroom. I couldn’t believe we were talking about the bathroom during my teacher evaluation last year. I thought I had a great plan for using the bathroom. My kindergarten...
A Strong Foundation: Books and Media for Launching Literacy Workshops
Beginnings are important, whether it is building a new relationship, building a home, or starting a new school year. Lucy Calkins talks about building invisible structures so that the deeper,...
First Shared Text: Fishing for Many Meanings with Adolescents
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. —Henry David Thoreau My husband, Mark, is an expert fisherman. I have...
Second-Grade Reading Share
Sean Moore leads his second graders in a reading share, teaching them about social norms and classroom expectations as they talk about their reading in this brief video.
“I Used To, and Now I”: An Early Year Minilesson
I’ve always done a minilesson early in the fall where I talk to my students about myself as a reader and writer. I’ve done this lesson for more than 10...
Using Summer Reading as Bookends for the School Year
I love to talk with adults about their summer reading plans. Some people enjoy tackling longer books during the summer months, whereas others like to catch up on series or...
Launching Reading Workshop: Mentor Texts
Unless we reach into our students’ hearts, we have no entry into their minds. Regie Routman Changing grade levels can be scary, because most likely the books and materials...
