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reading strategies

Give Your Reading Instruction an Easy Twist

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Do your students need a fun way to share what they are reading in class? This is a great twist on literature circles and book clubs that your students will enjoy. Come read the whole post and get some ideas for your upper elementary or middle school language arts lessons.

For years we’ve done Literature Circles and tried lots of variations, but this one worked really well with our students. The problem with Literature Circles is that some students just don’t like the different activities. This version allows students to have some independence while still having accountability (and something to show for the time). If you are looking for an activity to spice up your reading instruction, look no further than Twisted Literature Circles in our TpT Store (USD) or BN Shop ($CAN).

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How to Host Your Own Book Debates and Battles

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Inspire a love of reading and encourage your students to choose new books by using book debates. We've outlined the process to use this in your upper elementary classroom today based on the format for Canada Reads. Come take a look.

If you live in Canada, you might have heard of Canada Reads. Canada Reads is an annual “battle of the books” competition organized and broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). We have enjoyed the event for years and thought about how much fun it would be to do the same style of book debates in our classroom. Students love a good battle. Come learn about how it went and how you can host your own book debates.

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15 Ways to Engage Readers During Your Read-Aloud

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If your administration thinks reading aloud to your students is a waste of time, you need to read this post full of ways to engage readers and teach your language arts outcomes. It goes far beyond listening skills. Come get a whole bunch of ideas on how to get the most out of your read aloud.

It seems that there is less and less time for reading aloud to your students, but if you use that read-aloud to engage your readers, you can teach so many different skills. Kids (and adults) of all ages love to be read to. If that weren’t the case, there wouldn’t be a thriving industry of audiobooks.

Administrators want teachers to focus their time on literacy and numeracy. Things like read-alouds seem like “entertainment,” but there is so much value in reading aloud to children. Come learn how we turn every read-aloud into a lesson (without our students even knowing it).

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Are You Missing Out on the Love of Drama Circles?

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Are you missing out on the benefits of using drama circles in your upper elementary classroom? Come learn how to use them to help with listening skills, reading abilities and for the fun of it.

Before learning about drama circles, we weren’t sure how we could incorporate drama into our classroom in a meaningful way that didn’t take away from all the work we needed to do. Putting on a play just didn’t seem like a good use of our learning time, but we knew our students enjoyed acting. That is when we considered some of the benefits of drama circles in our upper elementary classroom.

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Amazing Activities Students Can Do Instead of Homework

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Are you looking for activities your students can do at home instead of homework? We don't assign homework in our upper elementary classroom. Instead, we assign activities and it's been a big hit. Come find out what you activities you can do instead of homework.

We don’t assign formal homework to our students. It’s actually a district policy, but we also don’t believe that homework serves any real purpose other than causing frustration at home and making work for students. Instead, we assign a list of activities students can do at home instead of homework. We get WAY more engagement and everyone loves it.

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How to Set Up Your Reading Comprehension Schedule

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If you use our weekly reading comprehension sets (or maybe you want to learn more), come see how we schedule the first month and get some ideas for how you can use these reading and grammar activities in your classroom whether your instruction happens in the classroom or online.

If you are struggling with reading instruction in your classroom, you’re not alone. Upper elementary teachers are often not trained in how to teach students to read, despite the fact all the students in their classroom are unlikely to be reading at grade level. Setting up a reading comprehension schedule is one way to get on track.

We designed our Weekly Reading Comprehension Skills specifically for our students. We needed reading material for science and social studies that were at the right reading level and needed to teach grammar and reading skills. You might want to read this post about how we came up with them: Add Great Content to Your Literacy Lessons.

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