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
Choosing Mentor Texts for Reading
In this quick take video, Aimee Buckner explains her criteria for selecting mentor texts for small-group, individual, and whole-class instruction.
Book Matchmaker: Short Vowel Practice with Older Students
Ellen is a school volunteer working with a group of students who are not reading at grade level in third grade. She is concerned about their understanding of short...
Social Justice Picture Books
Many wonderful new resources exist to introduce issues of social justice to even very young children. There are a wealth of picture books that can help us educate students, their...
Digging Deeper with Rereading
In this video from Katie DiCesare's first-grade classroom, Katie uses the strategy of rereading to help students look more closely at words—in this case, words that rhyme.
Reflections on a Year of Read Alouds
Last summer at about this time, I started to gather books I loved and thought my fifth grade students would also enjoy. My goal was to make a list of...
Preschool Morning Message
This five-minute video from Melissa Kolb's preschool classroom shows the value of morning message for teaching literacy skills. Melissa explains the skills children develop during this brief whole-class lesson and...
Launching the Newbery Club
The students arrived at 8:00 in the morning for the first Newbery Club meeting, and it was exciting to see them carrying their books. We took a quick inventory of...
Book Matchmaker: Texts to Inspire Our Youngest Readers and Writers
I recently received this request from Danielle DeRome, a first-grade teacher, asking for book recommendations: One of the hardest times for some students (and me!) is when they are...
Quick Take: Time Constraints in Conferences
In this two-minute video, Aimee Buckner explains how she deals with time constraints when she is conferring with students.
Guiding Readers in Kindergarten: A Planning and Assessment Template
"Guided reading is a context in which a teacher supports each reader's development of effective strategies for processing novel texts at increasingly challenging levels of difficulty." In Guided Reading: Good First Teaching...
Young Learners and Martin Luther King Day (BOOKLIST)
I never met this parent, but her concerns in a letter to the editor stayed with me for years. The parent was very upset that her kindergarten daughter came home...
Literacy Letters: Helping New Students Understand Ongoing Assignments
How do teachers bring new students up to speed with ongoing assignments? In this video from Katie Doherty's middle school classroom, Katie presents the latest "Literary Letters" assignment to her...
When to Group?
Reading groups are such an ingrained element of our teaching culture that teachers can feel guilty if they choose other instructional methods. In this conversation with fourth-grade teacher Rachel, Joan...
Using Picture Books to Spice Up Vocabulary Instruction (BOOKLIST)
Vocabulary instruction has always been a challenge for me. I believe strongly that students need to learn vocabulary in context, but I have realized recently that there are concepts related...
Undercover Coach: Making Time to Work with Children
Have you ever watched the television show Undercover Boss? Each episode shows what happens when a high ranking official of a company attempts to do an entry level job in the...
Quick Takes: Advice on Book Hogs
In this quick take video, Franki Sibberson gives advice for dealing with "book hogs" -- those students who try to grab any new book when it appears in the classroom...
Book Clubs: Setting the Stage with Conferring
It was an exciting time in Room 10's readers' workshop. The third graders I worked with over the past year were making the transition from thumbing through beginning chapter books...
Reorganizing Books in the Reading Support Classroom
You could say teaching is in my blood . . . literally. There is a long line of teachers in my family. My mom is a reading support teacher, and...
“The Wrath of Guess Jeans”: Response and Read Around
In this second video in a three-part series, Katie Doherty leads her 6th graders through a response activity. In this installment, the students respond orally and share some of their...
Book Matchmaker: A Friendship Theme for Literature Circles
Recently Joan asked me to recommend some books that dealt with the theme of friendship. She was planning a set of literature circles, and in the past had never...
Building the Reading Community Among Teachers
The starting point for teaching reading is always our own lives as readers—tuning in to our processes as proficient readers, and then tapping that knowledge to help the children in...
