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
Understanding the Middle East Through Children’s Literature (BOOKLIST)
As educators of kids, as well as literacy coaches who work with adults, we have been searching for quality children’s literature about the Middle East. Countries from the Middle East...
Every Picture Tells a Story
My house is decorated with a hodgepodge of artifacts, memorabilia, and photos that transport friends and family to different times and places. Gazing at photos and reliving these experiences is...
Research IS the Project (Primary Research Series)
Have you had good chocolate and then tried really excellent chocolate? Were you ever able to go back to the just-good chocolate? Yeah, me neither. That’s what happened when I...
Embracing the Growth Mindset with Audiobooks
Have you ever been at a school or community event where kids are challenged to three-legged races or water balloon tosses? And then all of a sudden they announce a...
Audioboo, QR Codes, and Authentic Reading Response
This year I have given a lot of thought to authentic reading responses. I don’t know about you, but I do not typically finish a book and create some type...
Just-Right Poetry and Individualizing Instruction
One of the challenges of teaching is finding the right books and materials to address specific instructional goals. Once teachers have found the perfect book to help their students understand...
March Book Madness
During the month of March, like many people in the United States, I am consumed by college basketball. In my opinion the NCAA Basketball Championship is the greatest thing in...
Poetry and Fluency Minilesson in Second Grade
Sean Moore uses poetry for a short minilesson on fluency, and then follows with a partner share and vocabulary discussion. The poem Sean reads with the children is The Busy...
Beyond Text Features in Nonfiction Instruction
When I think back to my past teaching connected to nonfiction reading, I often (no matter the grade) did a unit on nonfiction text features. We worked for a few...
Putting the Search Back in Research
When I saw an entire subsection in the Common Core Writing Standards devoted to “Research to Build and Present Knowledge,” I rubbed my hands together and said, “It’s time.” My...
Science Challenge
Franki Sibberson's fourth-grade students share results from the weekly science challenge.
Getting More from Wonderopolis
Franki Sibberson uses Wonderopolis with her 4th grade students, helping them learn to research and dig more deeply at the site.
Poetry Minute: Forms and How to Teach Them
In the same way that artists learn the rules of form and color before they experiment with ways to break the rules, students often feel more comfortable writing poetry when...
Supporting the Transition to Middle School: An Elementary Teacher’s Perspective
As the month of May rolls around and our state testing is completed, my focus shifts to our district’s required database for my fifth graders as they transition to three...
What Information Is Good Information? Smooth and Effective Transitions to Middle School
With each passing year, I accumulate larger piles of data about my incoming middle schoolers: spelling inventory scores, Developmental Reading Assessment scores, state test scores, and district diagnostic scores. Yet...
Transitioning to an E-Book Reader in Eighth Grade
Katie Baydo-Reed works with Mike, an eighth grader who is using an ebook reader for the first time.
Kindergarten Moments Count: Question of the Day
One of the struggles I feel as I try to make every moment count in my kindergarten classroom is the pull between incorporating the scripted reading program and using best...
Letter Practice Transition in Kindergarten
Mandy Robek "warms up" her kindergartners' brains for literacy work with a simple one-minute alphabet activity.
Building a Reading Community with Edmodo
Several years back I had the joy of hearing Donalyn Miller speak. At some point during the session she talked about teaching students how to be independent readers. She said,...
Supporting Introverts in a First-Grade Classroom
When your work speaks for itself, don’t interrupt. Henry J. Kaiser It’s Saturday night as I sit to writing this. I have a mug of tea, a blanket, my...
Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Reading and Community in Kindergarten
Mandy Robek leads her kindergartners in a shared reading and performance of the classic tale Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
