Reading Education Articles for Teachers - Page 2

We live in a fast-paced time with new software, applications, and devices introduced to the market on a daily basis. Young learners in this digital age often rapidly outpace teachers in their understanding and willingness to push boundaries of the various technologies available. While some believ...

My favorite teacher used to say that books seem to expand after every reading, as they soak in the reader's thoughts and ideas. As a child, I loved this concept and would carefully examine my books. I imagined that they would magically gain width as I moved between the first and last page. As a t...

During our language arts unit this month, we focused on persuasive writing. Students practiced higher-order thinking skills, and learned to develop the reasoning to defend their convictions. To introduce this concept, I started with a mini-lesson to help students develop a definition of persuasiv...

For our writing unit this month we focused on constructing a class big book about cheetahs. This provided a fantastic way to give students a model for upcoming science research projects that the children will be working on. This has always been my favorite writing unit, as I love to see the stude...

Tomie dePaola is a wonderful author to focus on in the primary grades. Tomie dePaola is an author and illustrator of both picture books and chapter books. Because of his strong characters and beautiful illustrations, children thoroughly enjoy his books during this unit of study. As with most...

It is essential for students to make connections to text as they read. For some students this comes naturally, however, for most students this skill has to be learned and reinforced by making written responses to texts. Recently, I have had the students in my class focus on making text ...

Writer's workshop is an effective way to build a classroom of authors. However, it can be a challenge to keep your writers, and yourself, organized. Although it may require more planning, I have found that implementing a successful writer’s workshop in the classroom is worth t...

Conducting an author study in your classroom has many advantages. When you focus on a specific, well-known author and his or her books, you give students a chance to analyze writing styles, themes, characters, and subjects. Kevin Henkes is a great way to introduce students to the idea of an autho...

How do pupils use a writer’s notebook? What exactly is a writer’s notebook? These are questions that came up during my first year of teaching. I found that even seasoned teachers struggled with the idea of how to get students to produce writer's notebooks that were unique and meaningful. A writer...

Readers' Theater is a fun and interesting way to get students reading. As most teachers know, it is an activity in which students, while reading directly from scripts, are able to tell a story in an entertaining form. This is a reading activity, so students are not asked to memorize the...

In teaching the comprehension concept of drawing conclusions, most teachers know that a conclusion is the decision you make using the information you already know, and the information you gather as you read a text. For example, it is common knowledge that wolves are considered carnivores or wild ...

From its modest beginnings, Christmas has evolved into one of the biggest celebrations in the world. Christmas is an annual holiday celebrated on December 25. This day may have initially been chosen to correspond with either a Roman festival or the winter solstice. Christmas is one of a number of...

Are you looking for some ideas to get some practice for your fledgling readers? Are you finding that you just don’t have the time to sit down to work with each individual reader? If so, you may want to try some guided reading in your classroom.   What is Guided Reading? Guided reading t...

In order to better understand what they are reading, students are taught to identify an author's purpose. There are three main purposes, and those are to inform, to entertain, or to persuade. Teachers can also explain these terms in the following way: to inform usually means provid...

The Thanksgiving holiday can be used in the classroom as a hook for many different learning activities. You can start by offering a little bit of the history surrounding celebrating Thanksgiving in America. Begin by talking about how it has been traditionally considered a festival to gi...