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
Conferring with Tweens: Nastia
Katie Doherty confers with Nastia, a 6th grade English language learner who is working on her inferring skills:
Grouping: Who? How Big? How Often?
One of the more vexing dilemmas for teachers is how to group for instruction. No matter how teachers group students, they often wonder if there might be a better way....
Reading Conferences in 5th Grade
Karen Terlecky confers with her 5th graders during reading workshop.
Launching a Book Club in 4th Grade
In this video from Andrea Smith's 4th grade classroom, students get organized for a small group author study of Andrew Clements. Watch how Andrea listens carefully to get a sense...
Helping Young Readers Become Independent
Primary grade children must develop the strategies they will need to learn how words work, to read for understanding, and to make sense of different text structures and genres. Finding...
Book Matchmaker: Texts for an Advanced First Grader
Joan is a first-grade teacher who has one reader in mind - a student who is reading well above grade-level expectations (a level 44 on the Developmental Reading...
Frogs as Learning Ambassadors Part 2: Literary Nonfiction in 4th Grade
When you visit our classroom, you see many aquariums filled with unusual frog and toad specimens arranged throughout our learning community. Other animals live with us, but the frogs are...
Book Matchmaker: Intermediate Read-Alouds
A Dog's Way Home by Bobbie Pyron is about Abby and her dog, Tam. Abby and Tam are inseparable. Tragedy strikes and they are separated. Both have trouble moving...
Why Read? – A Question to End the School Year
After Memorial Day, I always feel a slight sense of euphoria, but also one of dread. My school year ends in mid-June, and while I love summer vacation, the perfectionist...
The Sponge Summary Lesson Part 1
This is a companion video series to Heather Rader's article "A Sponge is a Summary." In this sequence of videos, Heather teaches a 4th grade class, using the analogy of...
Book Matchmaker: Graphic Novels for a 6th Grader
Heather Rader, an instructional specialist, is looking for some graphic novels to share with a group of 6th grade girls. The girls are graphic novel fans and have already...
The Sponge Summary Lesson Part 2
This is a companion video series to Heather Rader's article "A Sponge is a Summary." In this sequence of videos, Heather teaches a fourth-grade class, using the analogy of a...
Book Matchmaker: 5th Grade English Language Learners
Robin Heist is an elementary ELL teacher. She is thinking about her older English language learners who are reading below grade-level expectations. She is hoping to find books...
How Do We Structure Small Groups? (Part 3 of the Grouping Series)
Fifth-grade teacher Pam was encouraged by her principal to transition from mostly whole-group instruction to include more small-group instruction, especially in the area of reading. The previous year she'd used...
The Sponge Summary Lesson Part 3
This is a companion video series to Heather Rader's article "A Sponge is a Summary." In this sequence of videos, Heather teaches a fourth-grade class, using the analogy of a...
Working with Adults: Structuring Effective Conferring
Most of us acquire the ability to run shortly after we learn to walk. Although the movement is second nature, given the choice, many of us choose not to engage...
The Art of Slow Reading: A Conversation with Tom Newkirk (PODCAST)
Tom Newkirk chats with Brenda Power about his book The Art of Slow Reading. Newkirk is a professor at the University of New Hampshire, and the author of many acclaimed...
Wonderopolis: Nonfiction, Technology, and Web-Based Independent Learning
Wonder questions bring life and energy to learning. This school year, I started using a powerful digital website called Wonderopolis. Each day, my students and I visit this site during Morning...
Spring Reading Interviews (TEMPLATE)
We believe strongly that students should live authentic lives as readers in our classrooms. Following each interview, we want to put the information together for ourselves. We start by asking...
Catching Struggling Readers Before They Fall with Pat Johnson and Katie Keier (PODCAST)
Pat Johnson and Katie Keier are the authors of Catching Readers Before They Fall. In this podcast, Franki Sibberson chats with Pat and Katie about their latest thinking on teaching strategies...
Digital Reading: Another Facet of a Classroom Library
My students enjoy a variety of digital resources in their learning lives, and are exploring digital books and resources for reading workshop and independent reading at home. As we looked...
