Some books present you with the best kind of difficulty: they are full to bursting with literary goodies, so rich that you can’t hope to teach the book for absolutely all it’s worth. Far from scouring the page to figure out something that will excite students and meet your instructional goals, these books require you to practice restraint–to pick out a few gems and leave the rest alone, so as not to belabor the reading. The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill is one of those books. I recently digitized my Girl Who Drank the Moon novel study, and was reminded of how well the author used multiple…
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How to Celebrate Fall Without Losing Instructional Momentum (Reading Workshop)
The weather changes, the leaves turn and you are faced with this dilemma: should I be the festive teacher, or the dutiful teacher? The one who closes the windows and trudges through the curriculum, or the one who cancels class to carve pumpkins? In college I imagined I would be the festive teacher. Once I was actually in the classroom I was dedicated to being the dutiful teacher. But inevitably the season would make itself felt and I just couldn’t resist a short break from my lesson plans for a holiday themed activity. More recently, I’ve tried to get the best of both worlds by creating holiday “mini units.” These…
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Help Students Read Every Day while Learning From Home: Distance Learning, At-Home Reading Workshop
When school closures rolled across the country last April, teachers quickly adapted to provide digital resources for their students. We were all in survival mode, and a lot of these activities amounted to digital busy work. It was the best we could do. But now we’re faced with the daunting reality of intermittent school closures, or models that combine face-to-face teaching with digital teaching. One of the greatest challenges, I think, to digital teaching is the loss of a daily, reading practice. At school you can monitor and assist student’s daily reading. You can develop reliable routines that help students build reading stamina. But when kids are learning from home,…
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Display a Daily Reading Prompt to FOCUS Your Reading Workshop
The open ended nature of reading workshop creates opportunities for all kinds of student growth, but it can also make things feel unmoored and chaotic. Even when your students have the routines down pat, you may wonder if your instruction and assessment are a little too free-form. For me, the problem went like this: my reading block was short (80 minutes a day), and I often had to choose between giving students time to read each day (the heart of workshop), or doing some kind of paperwork that would translate into a grade for that week. Time was so limited that losing even one day of independent reading a week…
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Genre Study Roundup: 11 Posts to Get You Started, or Up Your Genre Study Game
Whew, this series on genre study has worn me out. But now we have this nice little library of genre study resources! Here are some posts to get you started if you’re hoping to learn more about genre study: If you’d like to preview or purchase ready-made genre units, this free Genre Study Catalogue is a good starting point. Happy reading!
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Are You Teaching Face-to-Face or Remotely? Either Way, These Resources Have You Covered.
There’s so much uncertainty about the upcoming fall. Will most be kids in the classroom, or at home? What will classrooms look like? How will we keep kids and teachers safe? All of this makes the already hectic back-to-school rush even more difficult. For my part, I’ve been updating TpT resources so they can be used in the classroom or at home. My main goal (and hope!) is to provide digital resources that structure meaningful reading in the classroom and at home. As I update products I’ll include them here on this running list. The resource fall into these categories: Reading Workshop Routines Reading Instruction/Genre Study Repeated Practice/Test Prep Social…
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Design a FULL Genre Unit that You Can Use Year After Year
Last week I wrote about sketching out a genre unit. Today, we’ll look at the nitty gritty of planning a genre unit. Here are my goals when creating a genre unit: Build on the foundation of the last genre unit during mini lessons (spiral review). Immerse students in the genre by delivering daily read alouds. Give students ways to apply new learning to their independent reading (guided practice). Guided by these goals, my planning revolves around mini lessons, read alouds and guided practice. I want my genre units to be useful year after year, so I plan MORE lessons than any one teacher is likely to need. Having a library…
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Sketch Your Genre Unit in 6 Steps
If you want to teach your reading curriculum through a series of in-depth genre units (if you want to implement genre study), here’s your planning mantra: Collect, Immerse, Teach, Notice, Define, Analyze. In this post, I’ll summarize each of the six steps and explain how you can organize your lessons (all lessons, even the ones that aren’t genre-specific) logically across a unit. Here we go! Six Steps to Genre Unit Collect Quality Texts: This part is all you, the teacher. When you begin planning your genre unit, collect a big ol’ stack of grade-level picture books from the genre (bring one of those plastic crates on wheels to the library…or…
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How to Prepare & Conduct an Excellent Read Aloud
I’m a great big fan of genre study, and genre study relies on genre immersion (reading the genre throughout workshop: read alouds, guided reading, independent reading, etc.). One of the best ways to expose students to a new genre is though daily read alouds. Teachers love sharing awesome picture books with students, but sometimes the the purpose of read alouds become muddy. Are read alouds meant to mini lessons? Are they like a whole group version of guided reading? Are they just for fun? The first step to planning an excellent read aloud is to remember what read alouds are for. What Are Read Alouds FOR? It’s useful to refer…
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A Versatile Template for Read Alouds (Free Download)
One of my favorite things about reading workshop is finding and sharing picture books with students. Shared readings generate discussions (academic and personal) that are relevant to your kiddos . While ‘meeting student needs’ is one of the great benefits of shared readings, it’s also one of the great challenges. Suiting a favorite read aloud to this particular class year after year can be time consuming. When I was creating my series of genre units, I wanted to include discussion guides for shared readings that would be versatile enough to fit a range of needs, but specific enough to make them low-prep for teachers. I ended up a creating a…
