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
First Graded Guided Group: Chunking Words
Melissa Atwood leads a first-grade guided reading group. The focus at the start of the lesson is on chunking words. This is the first video in a two-part series.
Exploring Author’s Craft in Graphic Novels
I have noticed that my eighth graders can easily be divided into two groups: those who read graphic novels and those who don’t. In fact, these categories also work for...
30-Second Pair-Share
Sean Moore leads his second graders in a quick pair-share to help everyone reflect on what they learned during independent reading.
Reading Mats Build Confidence
There have been times in my life when I haven’t been confident—when I was learning to drive a stick shift, when I started a new job, when I carried my...
It’s All in the Details
Details matter. Look for them. Collect them. Notice repetition. Notice patterns. Ask questions. If an author includes it, it serves a purpose. This is advice we give to our seventh-grade...
Teaching Theme Before the Holidays
Around the holidays last year, we came across several articles about the political incorrectness of the movie Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and other holiday classics of our childhood. We were...
Comparing Authors Minilesson
Jen Court helps second graders compare favorite author styles in this minilesson.
Text Set Resources
I’ll always remember Jonas. Most of us have had students like him. Jonas was a fourth-grade absentminded-professor kind of student. Given a topic, he’d go off to find information, and...
Conferring to Connect: First-Grade Reading
Bitsy Parks confers with first grader Ella about a book series, and then listens to Ella read. She closes the conference by encouraging Ella to make more personal connections to...
Text Sets: Reading Beyond Just Facts
In this world of online searching, skimming, and scanning, I want my students to experience the power of digging deeper into a subject. I want them all to read beyond...
Textual Lineage
A text that becomes a part of the student long after he reads it and leads him to think and act differently as a result of the text becomes part...
Moving from Interactive Read Alouds to Book Clubs
The first time I met with my neighborhood book club, I was nervous. I wondered, Should I bring notes? Will my ideas be “literary” enough to share with the group?...
Do Students Need to Love the Books We Read Aloud?
I had a lot of trouble deciding on the last read aloud of the year for my class of fifth graders. Nothing felt like the right match. Finally, I decided...
Read Alouds for Big Kids
My parents had four children in a relatively short period of time. They valued reading and did some reading aloud to us, but by the time we were in elementary...
Read Aloud in Middle School
My first 20 years of teaching were spent in elementary school. Over that time period, from a few years at lower elementary to 16 at fourth and fifth grade, one...
More Thoughtful Read Alouds
Franki Sibberson shares strategies for deeper reflection from students during read aloud to help them move beyond "like/don't like" responses to books. The strategies include pausing for written reflection, partner...
Grand Conversations and Read Aloud
“Wait a minute. Is there a turtle in this book or not? Are you saying that the turtle shell is a way to describe the preacher’s feelings? I completely missed...
Back-Channel Conversations During Read Alouds
While I was planning a read aloud, a colleague asked me, “What will students be doing while you read aloud?” I paused, hesitant to blurt out my initial response: listening....
Interactive Read Aloud and the Whole-Class Notebook
There are moments during read aloud that feel almost magical: when students lean in as the plot twists and turns, or when they snicker as they understand the author’s play...
Speed Reading
Like many of us, I live in a community with a robust Facebook group made up of parents from all over our district attendance area. Many communities have these groups,...
Read-Aloud Annotations: Google Slides
In this video series, Franki Sibberson's fifth graders share their strategies for annotating the class read aloud, The Girl Who Drank the Moon. Students have their choice of using notebooks...
