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
13 Ways to Raise Students Who Hate Research
Certainly there are just too many words of positive advice for how to raise empowered students. Sure, of course, some people want kids who are inquisitive and energized to learn....
What Can Charlie Do?: The Value of Response Journals in Preschool Classrooms
In the fall, Charlie’s drawing was of a single typical tadpole-like person. He formed a shaky version of C, the first letter in his name. His verbal story was: “C....
5th Grade Sentence Observation
Karen Terlecky leads students through a sentence study routine in her 5th grade classroom.
Independent Reading By the Numbers Is NOT Text Complexity
If we’re not talking to kids about what they’re reading, then it doesn’t matter what kind of book they choose. It’s the thinking and talking that help students unravel a...
Death in Books: Finding Our Way After Loss
My father died last fall. While his death was sudden, I continue to feel glad he is no longer suffering. Alzheimer’s was his unfortunate companion for years. He rarely knew...
Grouping Struggling Students for Word Study: A Case Study
Word study is the favored, go-to instructional strategy for all struggling learners. Teachers run to it so often that most struggling learners have been thoroughly steeped in phonics by the...
Nonfiction Reading Group in First Grade
Katie DiCesare brings together a group of her first-grade students who are reading nonfiction, helping them to expand the ways they share what they are learning with classmates.
Assessment to Grouping: Fifth-Grade Group on Character Traits
Karen Terlecky meets with fifth graders who both share the same need identified on a recent formative assessment, inferring character traits.
Madness, the Spring Slump, and High School Readers
I have worked hard over the past ten years to create a culture of reading in my 11th and 12th grade English classes. From book passes to book talks to...
Our Favorite Online Reading and Writing Tools Round-Up (Part 2)
Our tech-savvy contributors remind us that learning with technology should be embedded with sound instructional practice and have new ideas for how that can be done. If you missed Part...
Subheading Literacy: Nothing “Sub” About It
Subheadings do a lot of work in informational text; they are crucial comprehension touchstones. Similar to chapter headings, white space, and illustrations in narrative text, subheadings alert us to pause,...
They Can Sing and Define It, But Can They Use It?
One early fall afternoon, I casually walked into my colleague Linda Karamatic’s second-grade classroom and asked, “What are you working on in reading?” Linda said, “Well, I’m still working on...
Exploring Rick Riordan Books in an 8th Grade Conference
In this video from Katie Baydo-Reed's 8th grade classroom, Katie confers a student about his favorite Rick Riordan books and his plans for future reading.
Cooking Up Interest in Words with Fifth Graders
All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time. Ernest Hemingway I became fascinated with words from my grandmother, and my mother...
The Lunch Lady and Gender in Reading
Franki Sibberson's students read a blog post together, and then talk about books for boys and girls. You can click here to read the original blog post from Jarrett J....
Shared Reading in the Intermediate Grades
I know what you’re thinking when you hear the words shared reading. Kindergartners are sitting “criss-cross applesauce” on a colorful ABC rug in front of a big book version of...
Three Ways to Build Purpose in a Preschool Reading Workshop
For the past four months I have been sending my Head Start children off after our daily meal for “reading time” on the carpet while we complete our daily toothbrushing...
10 Principles for Planning Reading Minilessons
For a while, minilessons didn’t seem to fit into my bigger goals of the reading workshop. I realized a few years ago that I was often going through the motions...
Guidance and Choice in a Fifth-Grade Conference
Karen Terlecky confers with fifth grader Jillian the day after she has asked her to choose between two books for reading workshop.
Kindergarten I-Pick Minilesson
Mandy Robek presents a two-minute reminder minilesson to her kindergartners on the I-Pick strategy for selecting books during independent reading time.
Assessing Learning During Student-Led Book Clubs
My most important job during book clubs is to know what my sixth-grade students are thinking. The point is to increase the rigor and accountability of each student through the...
