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
Patrick Carman on Books and Multimedia (PODCAST)
In this podcast, Franki Sibberson chats with Patrick Carman about multimedia books and the challenges of teaching and learning in an age with so many media distractions. You can visit...
Connecting Yoga and Character Traits in Literature Study
"Sat Nam!" the voices shouted at 8:15 a.m. right before they headed down the hall on their way to start their day at school. I had just finished my Monday...
Teaching Stamina Strategies to First Graders
Tammy Mulligan works with two seven-year-olds to teach them strategies for building reading stamina.
Strawberries, Fun, and Student Blogging
Growing as a teacher and learner requires honest feedback. Who else could be more honest than students? During winter break, I reflected on my teaching practices in order to set...
Ready for Guided Reading? A Second Look
Once you've written something, it is out there - forever. Thankfully, we keep growing and changing. We gain more insights, experience, and knowledge. But sometimes this makes us wish that...
Caught in the Middle: Tween Books to Excite Readers
When my youngest was 10, she would disappear into her closet after a shower and not emerge for about an hour. I asked her once what she was doing for...
Rethinking Mentor Texts
I know. That title kind of makes your heart skip a beat, doesn't it? Imagine how I felt when I read it in a National Council of Teachers of English...
New Books to Celebrate Poetry
Spring is a great time to update your poetry collection. This has been a terrific year for children's poetry -- here are some wonderful new collections I am sure your...
Planning Small Groups to Teach Phonetic Skills
As we work with teachers and students in classrooms to plan small-group lessons for at-risk readers, we notice a recurring pattern. Many students can say a particular phonetic rule like...
Newbery Club Wrap-Up
Editor's Note: This is the final installment in a three-part series about a 5th Grade Newbery Club. You can click here to read Part I, and here for Part II. We had our final Newbery...
The Amazing School Librarian: An Interview with John Schumacher (PODCAST)
In this podcast, Franki Sibberson and John Schumacher chat about how John managed to read over 1700 books in 2010, as well as keep up with his popular blog and...
Kelly Gallagher on Readicide (PODCAST)
Kelly Gallagher is the author of numerous bestselling books for high school teachers, including Reading Reasons and Readicide. In this podcast with Franki Sibberson, he explains the concept of Readicide, and what we need...
Writers, Choice and Independence (Part I)
I had an observer in my classroom a few years ago who said, "I love how independent your students are during the workshop. They're such independent writers for fourth graders."...
Great Lead Investigators
It's writing time. As I meander around the room and read over the shoulders of my 6th graders, I realize it's time to talk leads. Writing leads is a strategy...
It May Be a Mess, But It’s Our Mess: Creating a Student-Organized Classroom Library
It may be a mess, but it's our mess . . . This is my thought as I look around my first grade classroom. Children are spread out in groups...
Procedural Writing in Math
I'm getting ready to make gluten-free oatmeal cookies, and I'm thinking about what a fifth grader said to me: "We spent all this time working on word choice and voice,...
Read Alouds for the Last Days of School
Last month we surveyed readers of our weekly newsletter The Big Freshrequesting suggestions for literacy activities for the final days of school. Hundreds of teachers wrote back. This week we...
Book Matchmaker: Teaching Inferring to Intermediate Students
Kathy is a literacy coach in a grades 3-5 school. She is looking for new books to use to teach inferring to students. Readers often have experience with...
Save the Picture Books!
I got the bad news from my friend, Pam Pifer. I opened an email from her and it contained this article from the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/08/us/08picture.html. The reporters note a dramatic...
Purposeful First Grade Reading Share Sessions
Katie DiCesare prompts her 1st grade students during the reading share time at the end of workshop to make connections between the strategies they use during independent reading time and...
Writing and Publishing Book Reviews with Middle School Students
If you've ever spent time with 8th graders, you'll find that they review everything. Whether it's today's lunch, their teachers' outfits, their new assignment, or the latest video game, the students...
