Reading is a participation sport!  It can’t be emphasized enough that if we want children to become strong and capable readers, they have to actually READ – plain and simple.  Think about it.  If you wanted to get better at your favorite sport,  how would you do it?  First you would ensure that you had [...]

Reading response journals can be a great way of helping students of all reading abilities think about the things that happen in a story they are reading.  I like to use a spiral binder for this purpose. When students start a new text, they write the details such as title, author, publication date and so [...]

Here is a great way to help children practice segmenting and blending in a fun way. Give students a stretchable item such as silly putty or a slinky. Give them a word to “stretch out” into it’s segmented parts. As they stretch out the word slowly, tell them to stretch the item they are holding. [...]

In our diverse culture, students bring their own culture to the reading experience. We can help students better understand the characters in the fiction they are reading by asking them to consider the perspectives a character might have rather than looking at the issues or problems from their own background or cultural perspective. Some questions [...]

Get students interested in monitoring their own reactions to text by asking them to rate each chapter of a book they are reading on an “interest level” chart.  After reading each chapter, students color in the bar to indicate how interested they were in the text of that chapter. Students can then discuss their reactions [...]