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
Giving Up the Whole-Class Novel
Edie stomped into the coach's office lugging a 15-gallon Rubbermaid storage tub. She dumped the contents out onto a table. Out rolled penguin beanie babies, penguin posters, a DVD of...
When Does Level Matter? Being Efficient with Small Group Instruction
I find my flexibility as a teacher is both challenged and validated when I group students for instruction. When I think about the wide range of needs in my classroom...
Mentor Texts for Urban Students
I sat back, closed my eyes, and listened to Victoria's voice. I was visiting her fifth grade classroom during writing workshop. She was reading Up North at the Cabin (Chall, 1992). Her...
How Do We Talk with Parents About What It Means to Be Challenged in Reading?
When we meet with the parents of young advanced readers, we begin by using data to show just how much their student knows as a reader. We want the parents...
Out of the Closet and into the Classroom: Bookroom Management Tips for Literacy Coaches
Literacy coaches seldom have neutral feelings about their school's literacy closet or bookroom. They either love it or hate it. They love it at the beginning of the school year...
Planning to Teach with Mentor Texts: Two Examples
Much has been written in recent years about how teachers should find a couple of good mentor texts that they love and just use them repeatedly, for a variety of...
The Book Lovers Quilt Project
"Ida B. is the book I fell in love with this year," 11-year-old Sara gushed to Ruth. "I've read it 12 times. I even own three copies, I'm so obsessed....
The Reading Skills We Use When Searching the Internet
Our students are often much more technologically savvy than we are. They have grown up with tools that are fairly new to us. They often know how to teach themselves...
Books for Strategy Studies
I love finding new texts for the classroom. When I read new-to-me books, I often imagine the faces of young learners from past classes reading with me. A time-tested favorite...
The Joy of Letter Writing: An Integrated Unit for Intermediate Students
Note to self: Never underestimate the power of FUN in writing workshop. It started as a fairly typical unit of study. I knew that according to the academic content standards,...
Literacy Learning on Presidents Day (BOOKLIST)
As someone who is fairly new to the role of librarian, I have been thinking about the holidays that we celebrate throughout the year and the books available to celebrate...
Books That Invite Thoughtful Conversation in Grades K-2
One of the favorite parts of my new job as a school media specialist is that I get to read aloud to primary students again. There is nothing like seeing...
Living Words: Integrating Word Study, Technology, and Content Literacy (Part 1)
I will be honest. I am a "digital immigrant," a person new to rapidly changing technologies. I am proud to say that I am adjusting, and I've accepted the fact...
Our Living Minute: Integrating Nonfiction Study into Morning Meetings
Last summer, Samantha Bennett's text That Workshop Book: New Systems and Structures for Classrooms That Read, Write, and Think helped me reconsider my work as a classroom teacher striving each day...
The Importance of Book Clubs for Learners of Any Age
Two years ago, I had the idea to start an adult book club at my school. I pitched the idea out there, and lo and behold, there were a handful...
Expanding the Ways We Preview Books
Our 5th graders are moving to middle school. As incoming 6th graders, they are given a summer reading assignment by our district. As I was looking at the four books...
Countdown: Keeping Children at the Center of My Plans for the New Year
I did a crazy thing the other day: I started a countdown to school on iGoogle. For those of you who want to know: 23 days, 12 hours, 10 minutes,...
Picture Books for Shared Reading
Last week I was reading Shari Frost's article, Whatever Happened To Mrs. Wishy Washy? when I began to think about the Big Books that have been loved in my room over the...
Word Storms: Integrating Nonfiction, Word Study, and Technology
It's a busy Tuesday morning and my classroom is buzzing with the conversations of children. I settle in a chair beside Hirokai, a beginning English language learner, who is still...
Book Basket Idea: Cars and Trucks
Around this time of year I am anxious to look back at what kids loved to read. I take into account what baskets the students fought over (literally), and the...
Bilingual (English/Spanish) Books that Celebrate Language, Family and Culture
By late summer, I am looking forward to so many things -- meeting students and their families, getting a sense of how they will come together and form a new...
