Topic: Reading

How do we encourage students to genuinely engage with challenging or difficult texts? Today on the Heinemann Podcast, Marilyn Pryle, author of “Reading with Presence” suggests a method of writing and sharing reading responses, which differ from the usual short essay answer.

Confident readers know how to choose books. Which is not to say that we are immune to error. Every avid reader has experienced book droughts where nothing you pick up has what you are looking for.

Most reading workshop experts suggest that students spend no more than 10% of their reading time writing about reading. During the other 90% of reading time, students should be reading, engrossed in books they can read with a high level of accuracy in order to achieve the kind of reading volume that leads to maximum growth.

When we want nothing from a text but what it might have to offer our minds and spirits on its own terms, we read with presence.

Here, Kate Roberts shares just a few extended classroom clips from her book, A Novel Approach. In this blog, you'll get a chance to watch Kate confer with two different students, and see how Kate structures a mini-less and read aloud.

Before we were teachers, we were readers−readers who understand the power reading has to change our lives from the new characters we meet, the new places we visit, and the new lessons we learn.

A wrap up of the PLC series posts from 2017-18 year.

Whole-class novels can offer a method of teaching that allows us to ignite a sense of community in the classroom.

If you read aloud regularly to your students, you know: there is no time in the day quite like read aloud time. A good read aloud can bring a group together like nothing else, can provide a foundation of camaraderie, trust, and respect in a classroom.

Patricia Vitale-Reilly's book Supporting Struggling Learners: 50 Instructional Moves for the Classroom Teacher provides practical strategies for empowering students with the right tools to grow and learn. In this video, Patricia talks about providing strong study skills.

This book is for teachers who want to revive the art of analytical writing in their classrooms—from teachers of middle-grade writers who are making their first foray into analytical writing to teachers of experienced twelfth-grade writers who are looking ahead to college where their professors will expect much, much more.

The study guide includes easy-to-use worksheets, reflection questions, and workshop strategies to invigorate reading instruction in your classroom and guide students through difficult texts.

Have you ever conferred with students who struggle to determine what information is really important? A clearly stated purpose for reading multiple sources can make the difference between productive and unproductive reading and thinking for many students. Here's what that might look like...

All students, those that gravitate toward nonfiction and those that don’t, need opportunities to engage with nonfiction not just during nonfiction reading units, but all year long.

if you have a good readers workshop going in your classroom I give you a hi-five and say keep it up! There are, though, a few caveats that might cause you to consider the whole class novel approach...

The use of different formats helps authors shape the same information in different ways. As a result, diverse sets of sources promote critical thinking.

In this following video, Kate walks you through what you can expect to find in her new book, A Novel Approach, and shows you how you too can find a student-centered, balanced approach to teaching reading.

I believe we can teach whole class novels in ways that increase independence, ability, and engagement. We can keep our novels, but we may need to change the way we do them.