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
Managing Your Students’ Independent Work During Guided Reading
“I know how to teach guided reading,” a second-grade veteran teacher commented to me. “It’s keeping the other students occupied that gets in the way.” We all know the numerous...
Small-Group Conversations About Independent Reading
Before the pandemic and before I had my own classroom, I worked as an instructional coach. I worked with and admired a fabulous teacher who made hot chocolate for students...
Energizing Early Readers: The Classroom Library as a Co-Teacher (Booklist)
One of the best parts of teaching first grade is being there for The Moment—having a front-row seat as one by one, kids realize that the skills they have developed...
Five Ways to Teach Fluency
“The…” I tap my pen on my lap underneath the table. “...man…” I wiggle my feet in my boots. “...walked…” I doodle in the margin. Christopher’s slow, labored reading fills...
Validating Students
“Mrs. Burk, Mrs. Burk, come quick!” I swiftly turn around and look across the room, then walk toward the voice calling me. I expect to see something dramatic happening ....
Rural Matters: Revealing Perceptions and Celebrating Roots
If you’re reading this article, there’s a good chance that you either teach rural students or were a rural student yourself. According to a research study conducted in 2019, “Nearly...
Assessing High School Readers
Secondary instructional coach Holly Wenning shares ways to assess high school readers.
Assessment in Classroom Book Clubs
Once books are selected, groups are arranged, and reading begins, it is time to think about assessment. Because I work in a district that requires grades, I cannot spend four...
Identifying Story Elements
Well, that’s interesting, I thought as I thumbed through the completed set of plot diagrams in my hand. We were using plot diagrams to help students track the events of...
Implementing Classroom Book Clubs (Part Two)
Once book clubs have been established and a reading plan is created, it is time to begin reading. The first round of book clubs begins after independent reading has been...
Teaching Readers Rather Than Teaching Books
Secondary instructional coach Holly Wenning shares her own paradigm shift of teaching readers rather than teaching books, and encourages all teachers to consider the importance of putting students before books...
Getting Started with Classroom Book Clubs (Part 1)
After reading a great book, one of the first things I want to do is find someone else who has read it and talk to them about my thoughts, feelings,...
Less Is More: Using Novels in Verse in the Classroom
It’s an unfortunate fact that many students who enter my class don’t identify as readers and haven’t read a book on their own in some time. Independent reading is a...
Expanding the Definition of “Text”
Holly Wenning helps us expand the definition of text when considering mentor texts and reading assessments.
The Importance of the Workshop Model in High School
Instructional coach Holly Wenning shares the importance of the workshop model, and especially work time, for high school students. See the transition from minilesson to work time in a 10th-grade...
The Power of an Anchor Chart in a Digital World
I have noticed a trend lately that anchor charts seem to be disappearing in classrooms. I see commercially printed posters on the walls outlining character traits or phonetic rules. Or...
Spoiler Alert: You Can Start Big to Go Small (Macbeth in One Class Period)
As the students walked into the classroom, I greeted them by handing each student a script: a 10-minute version of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The students settled into their seats, and I...
Engaging Kids in Reading Intervention
I had a lot of fears moving from the classroom into the role of reading interventionist. I didn’t sleep very well after accepting the position as interventionist because my fears...
Questions to Ask When Reading the Morning Message
It is morning meeting, and I watch several children avoid looking at the morning message plastered on the screen. Their lack of engagement quickly reminds me of how Covid disrupted...
Building a Classroom Library with Students (and Navigating the Tricky Parts)
I intentionally started the school year with hundreds of books scattered on a few shelves because I wanted the children to construct the library. And yes, after 10 days in...
Spontaneous Text Sets
When it was time for me to take back the class from my student teacher, I contemplated starting up author studies. The idea overwhelmed me. The rhythm of this year...
