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
Claiming a Reading Identity
Keeping excitement for the next book to read can be a challenge. This session offers two ideas to sustain energy for independent reading. Melissa Quimby shares a creative and practical idea for students to name their reading identities. Christy Rush-Levine offers a tried-and-true practice of offering book talks so students can create a robust "To Be Read" list.
Celebrating Reading Identities in the Elementary Classroom
We gathered together on the rug with the understanding that an exciting project was about to begin. I anchored readers in familiarity as I inquired, “What do you remember about...
Adding Energy to the Classroom Library
Although I add books to my classroom library each year, moving schools and changing grade levels was an invitation to make changes. Opening the boxes of packed books was an...
Status of the Class for Readers and Writers
At the beginning of a school year, I posted the following photo from one teacher’s classroom on Twitter (also available here): A teacher from another school responded, “Great to do...
Honoring Student Choice in a Teacher-Chosen Text
Our seventh-grade curriculum includes several class texts. I love some things about class texts: They are perfect for pulling mentor sentences to teach author's craft and grammar points that are...
What Criteria Should We Use When Selecting Whole-Class Texts?
Do you think it is important for students to read stories that include a wide variety of characters (different races, religions, abilities, genders, etc.)? Here is what some of my...
Book Talk: Sheets and Delicates by Brenna Thummler
Christy Rush-Levine pairs Brenna Thummler's books Sheets and Delicates in this book talk for her sixth-grade class.
Quick Take: Simple Classroom Library Organization
Christy Rush-Levine shares her simple system for organizing her massive classroom library.
Leading Students Toward Underused Sections of the Classroom Library
When it comes to my high school classroom library, my students definitely play favorites where different genres are concerned. Realistic fiction is a perennial favorite. Some years I’ll have a...
The Seasons of Classroom Libraries
One June morning, within the final days of the school year, a child exclaimed, “The only reason I love reading is because of this class!” This declaration surprised me and...
Expanding Book Choices for Secondary Readers
I once met a 16-year-old star quarterback who loved Nicholas Sparks books. In the early days of the school year, as I was getting to know students as readers, I...
A Case for Graphic Novels as “Real” Reading
At the beginning of the school year, I send home a classroom library permission slip to open dialogue between school and home before putting books in students’ hands. I ask...
The Classroom Library: Building Bridges
Brandon was twice as tall as he was when he first stepped into my classroom all those years ago. It was a nice surprise to see him. Every once in...
Guided Reading Part 3: Closure
This is the first guided reading group in September for Cheryl Miller. She concludes the lesson by having students share their understanding of the text and reviewing skills that were...
Guided Reading Part 2: Whisper Reading and Instruction
This is the first guided reading group in September for Cheryl Miller. She continues the lesson by listening to the students whisper read and instructing them as needs arise. This...
How to Use Students’ Reading Logs as a Formative Literacy Assessment
During an instructional walk in a third-grade classroom, all the students were reading independently. The teacher, conferring with one of her students, got up and started to come my way...
Learning to Notice and Analyze Complexities
If I had to choose one word to encapsulate the Advanced Placement Literature course, it would be complexity. This word shows up in almost every prompt: Analyze the complexity of...
Finding Time for Read Aloud
Read aloud in middle school is a beast. When I taught elementary school, it was a no-brainer. My schedule would often have little 15-minute slots between PE and music, or...
Reimagining Reading Logs
Reading logs are a part of many classrooms. This session carves out space for teachers to consider the purpose of reading logs. Clare Landrigan makes the comparison between reading logs and running logs in a demonstration lesson. A choice of articles is given for participants to think more deeply about the purpose of reading logs.
Picture Books to Teach Conflict
One of the first units we teach in seventh-grade language arts is on short stories. The unit begins with lessons on story elements that should be review from lessons the...
Quick Take: Share Your Reading Struggles
Instructional coach Staci Revere reminds us of the importance of modeling our own reading lives for students, especially the parts where we struggle as readers.
