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
One Text. One Conversation. Many Possibilities.
It’s generally accepted that classroom discussion is an effective strategy for building comprehension and improving student achievement overall. But how it should occur around text is debatable. Guided reading? Yes,...
Digital Reading Strategies
As we encounter more digital texts, we must consider the reading strategies needed to understand them. In this session, participants will reflect on their own reading lives and identities as...
Extending Invitations in Workshop: Ways to Empower Student Choice
“All right, readers, it’s almost time to find your reading spot. Today you might try this work in your reader's notebook. Perhaps you’ll set up a page to study one...
Digital Reading Strategies
I’ve tiptoed around using digital texts in my classroom, yet I read information digitally all the time—blogs, websites, and tweets. I tend to read more books on my e-reader than...
Online Routines to Create Energetic Reading Communities
A weekly biography exploration, celebrated as Meet Someone New Monday, is filled with reading experiences that my fourth graders and I cherish. Meet Someone New Monday means sharing success stories...
Guided Reading in a First-Grade Group
Melissa Atwood leads a first-grade guided reading group. This is the second video in a two-part series.
Book Series Joy
Years ago I was inspired by Katie DeCesare’s article "Primary Series Study" to introduce my first graders to book series. I used her article to guide this mini-unit of study...
Guided Reading in First Grade: Blends
Melissa Atwood leads a first-grade guided reading group. The focus at the start of the lesson is on blends in words. This is the first video in a two-part series.
Interactive Read Aloud in Second Grade
Jen Court completes an interactive read aloud in a second-grade classroom.
Digital Interactive Read Alouds
Something we’ve been trying with teachers in the last few months is digital interactive read alouds. During the digital read aloud, we watch a short film with students and use...
Guided Reading Part 1: Previewing and Skills
This is the first guided reading group in September for Cheryl Miller. She begins the lesson by previewing the book and reminding students of the skills they are working on....
Preparing for Book Club Discussions
“When do we start book clubs?” “Who’s in my book club?” Book clubs are a much anticipated and loved part of our literacy curriculum. Most of our kids love the...
Using Picture Books for Rhetorical Analysis
It was ninth period, the end of the day, but the energy in the room was running high. Twelve 11th graders were sitting in a circle, each clutching a picture...
Response to Read Aloud
Tammy Mulligan enhances the quality of the class read aloud and student discussions with the use of a whole-class response notebook. Franki Sibberson shares how she integrates student choice and...
Flipping Literature Discussions
One of my fondest memories of literature classes in college is of our sitting in a circle and working through a difficult poem as a group, discussing and making meaning...
Lessons and Minilessons: What’s the Difference?
What is the difference between a lesson and a mini lesson? Minilessons are responsive to students by design. They can be planned for many purposes, to meet a variety of...
Varying Workshop Structures to Meet Student Needs
I just feel like I have so many students who need help. I end up sitting with just a few students and never see the rest. There’s never time for...
First Grade Minilesson: Connections
Melissa Atwood leads her first-grade class with a minilesson early in the school year on making connections to text.
Picture Books for Persona Poems
It was a Tuesday evening, and I was trying to get some writing done as I sat in the back of my daughter’s dance class. I had my notebook propped...
Interpretation and Comprehension
Teaching comprehension can be overwhelming. It seems as if there are so many skills for kids to learn and there's so much jargon: drawing conclusions, determining the main ideas, putting...
First-Grade Guided Group: Reading Practice and Recap
Melissa Atwood leads a first-grade guided reading group. This is the second video in a two-part series.
