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
Second-Grade Minilesson on Capital Letters
Ruth Ayres gives a brief minilesson on the use of capital letters to a class of second graders.
Mock Newbery Club
Last year I created my first ever Mock Newbery club. I rushed to come up with something in January, and students met with me over lunch one day to talk...
Exploring Winter with Short Texts
December is a short month with lots of interruptions like choir practices and holiday parties, which lead to antsy students. Because of the time limitations, we will focus on shorter...
Curating a Nonfiction Classroom Library
We should be curators of our libraries, not just collectors. Offering students an engaging, diverse classroom library requires more than buying books and putting them on bookshelves . . ....
Powerful Conferences
When we expect powerful conferences, then we get powerful conferences. Sometimes it is easy to think the videos of conferences we see online or the benefits we read about in...
Better Reading Conferences
Reading conferences. The idea of holding one used to send me into a downward spiral of anxiety. I knew I needed to include them as part of my reading workshop,...
Thinking About Theme
“So WHY did I read that story? What was its purpose? What was its meaning?” These were the bigger questions that were difficult for my students to answer at times,...
November Contract: Family and Memoir
November is a month of celebrating family and giving thanks. It’s a time when many people go "home" to relatives and traditions. As much as we all love our families,...
Shared Blogging in the Primary Classroom
Several years ago I discovered blogging as a way to build our first-grade learning community. Blogging changed our community as it opened the conversations between students, gave quieter students a...
Kindle Highlights: Conferring with Nicole
Franki Sibberson confers with fourth grader Nicole using Kindle Highlights as a teaching tool.
Using Wonderopolis in Classrooms
Franki Sibberson uses the website Wonderopolis with her fourth-grade students. By modeling how to navigate the site, she encourages her students to use the web in more thoughtful ways.
Dandelions, Chinese, and Patience with Our Youngest Learners
Seven dandelions plucked with short stems sit in a line on the arm of the bench. By this, I know that a very young child has been here recently. Only...
Two Lessons for Teaching Theme
I want students to know how to find theme in any fiction they are reading, and to be aware of the critical devices authors use to tell their story and...
Partner Reading Conference in First Grade
Katie DiCesare confers with Jack and Praneel about their partner reading.
Teaching Rereading Strategies: Backing Up and the Bossy E
In this conference with second grader TJ from Sean Moore's classroom, the strategies of backing up and rereading as well as attending to the "bossy e" are discussed.
She Wants to Be Katniss for Halloween: Courageous Girls in Books
Fifth-grader Kennedy has never dressed up as a girl for Halloween -- at least not since she was three years old. As soon as she was old enough to state...
Strong Girls Book Group
Franki Sibberson shares a range of books that include compelling female characters with a group of fourth-grade girls. Here is a list of the books mentioned by Franki in...
Research Book Clubs for Struggling Readers
This past fall one of our fabulous learning support teachers and I were sitting on the carpet after school trying to think of a way to get a student we...
Group Conference in First Grade
Katie DiCesare meets with Anna and Brendan to help them learn from each other and prepare to share their rereading strategies with the whole class.
Holding Thinking Minilesson with Second Graders
Deb Gaby uses an analogy of animal tracks to introduce the concept of "holding thinking" in reading journals to second graders.
The Art of the Book Talk
Book talks are a big part of our classroom and a critical part of our independent reading program. It is through book talks that I have created a frenzy over...
