Having a wide vocabulary is a huge part of what helps students to be successful in both reading comprehension and writing. This is why vocabulary is one of the National Reading Panel’s five core elements of reading instruction along with phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, and comprehension. In general, the wider a reader’s vocabulary is, the ...
Reading
Teaching Students to Analyze Character Traits and Characterization (3rd-5th Grade)
Analyzing character traits is a key fiction reading skill that is needed for successful comprehension. In most cases, authors do not just come out and tell readers the traits that a character possesses. By teaching students to take a close look at a character’s thoughts, dialogue, actions and feelings, students can begin to analyze and infer a ...
Making a Plan for Your Poetry Unit (Grades 3-5)
Starting to plan poetry month? a poetry unit? or prepping ways to sprinkle poetry in throughout the school year? It can be so time consuming to find quality resources for poetry instruction! These low prep resources below cover everything you will need to plan your poetry unit. They include everything from visuals to display and ...
Teaching Creating Sensory Images and Visualizing Reading Strategies
Explicitly teaching and practicing reading strategies is so important to give students tools to better comprehend what they are reading. Some of these powerful strategies include using background knowledge, making predictions, asking questions, making inferences, making connections, visualizing and creating sensory images. WHY SHOULD I ...
TEACHING STUDENTS TO FIND THE MAIN IDEA IN NONFICTION TEXTS
WHY TEACH STUDENTS TO FIND THE MAIN IDEA? Being able to find the main idea of a text is a complex and important nonfiction reading skill for upper elementary students (3rd-5th grade). “Learning how to understand what a section of a text or whole text is mostly about is critical to comprehension” (Serravello 2015). Teaching students to find ...
Using Genre Crafts as Activities for Teaching Genres to Elementary Students
Exposing students to a wide variety of genres is so important to creating lifelong readers. It helps students begin to identify who they are as readers, including their likes and dislikes. By building genre background knowledge they are able to make connections, and ultimately comprehend, a new book of the same genre. This is why it is so ...
Back to School: 5 Tips & Activities to Get Your Classroom Ready for Reading
From the moment students enter the classroom, they should feel excited to dig into books and reading instruction. There are ways we make our classroom visually inviting to new readers, as well as back to school reading activities we can have prepared. Beyond giving reading assessments, it is important for students to self-reflect and express ...
Nonfiction Text Features Scavenger Hunt (FREE Activity)
A nonfiction text features scavenger hunt is such a fun, hands on, and authentic activity for students to see text features in real texts or reading passages! Using nonfiction text features is such a an important skill when reading informational texts. They can be the key for growing readers in comprehending the main body of text. ...
5 Ways to Teach Making Predictions in Reading with Elementary Students
Making predictions is a critical reading comprehension strategy to teach and practice with students. It requires students to use what they have read and know about a topic in order to anticipate what will happen in a text, or what a text will be about. Making predictions before, during, and after reading comes very naturally to skilled readers, ...
Using Differentiated Reading Passages for Nonfiction Reading
We know that all students need access to grade level content area information, but how can we make this happen with students of so many varying reading levels? Some ways to support students in understanding difficult content area information are using engaging videos, photos, presentations, and giving clear oral descriptions. However, students ...
