Strategies and activities to develop an effective reading workshop program.

Conferring with students about reading allows for clearer access to one-on-one, in-the-moment teaching and learning, yet it can feel intimidating or overwhelming. Kari Yates and Christina Nosek want to help. Here they have provided practical, reflective, student-centered teaching moves that you can use to develop an intentional, joy-filled conferring practice.To Know and Nurture a Reader: Conferring with Confidence and Joy is a get-going guide to conferring. The book includes step-by-step guidance that is also considerate of time and other classroom challenges, as well as: Numerous tools such as guiding questions, reproducible planning and note-taking documents; Classroom vignettes that pull you close to a reader and teacher in a conference setting; Video clips of classroom conferences to show what conferring looks like in action. The book breaks conferring into manageable chunks with specific goals for knowing and nurturing young readers, then puts all the pieces together with various classroom scenarios and examples. The tools, examples, and ideas in this book make conferring something every teacher can do right away and master with continued effort and practice.

"The third-grade units were written to support the crucial transition children make from learning to read to reading to learn. The opening unit, Building a Reading Life, launches your students' lives as upper elementary school readers. Children ramp up their reading skills by immersing themselves in within-reach fiction books while working on word solving, vocabulary development, envisionment, and prediction. The second unit, Reading to Learn: Grasping Main Ideas and Text Structures, addresses essential skills for reading expository nonfiction, such as ascertaining main ideas, recognizing text infrastructure, comparing texts, and thinking critically, as well as the skills for reading narrative nonfiction, such as determining importance by using knowledge of story structure. The third unit, Character Studies, lures children into fiction books, teaching them to closely observe characters, make predictions, and sharpen their skills in interpretation. The final unit, Research Clubs: Elephants, Penguins, and Frogs, Oh My!, shows youngsters how to turn to texts as their teachers. Children work in clubs to gather, synthesise, and organize information about animals, and then use this information to seek solutions to real-world problems"--pearson.com.

This resource provides teachers with planning tools and flexible, easy-to-use lesson plans to begin implementing the reader's Workshop instructional model in their classrooms. Lessons are provided for establishing procedures for strong classroom management, building beginning reading skills, and supporting students at all levels. The included ZIP file provides customizable planning materials so that teachers can immediately implement lessons. 184 pages

Teach reading right with just-in-time expert advice! Whether you’re new to teaching reading or if you are a veteran whose goal is to focus on authentic reading instruction, this book is designed to be an on-the-desk companion, providing answers to your burning teaching questions at the moment you most need them. A lot has changed in reading instruction over the past decades, with old assumptions and tired curricula making way for both trusted and new best practices. Answers to Your Biggest Questions About Teaching Elementary Reading, written by a veteran teacher who’s an expert in literacy instruction, offers research-backed, classroom-tested guidance to set you on the right path. Through practical teaching strategies, classroom examples, actionable steps, further reading suggestions, and more, you’ll learn to Build and maintain an inclusive, equitable classroom reading community Structure, organize, and plan student-centered, responsive reading instruction Design and implement compassionate, effective assessment methods Engage and empower students to develop agency as readers You became a teacher to teach students—not curriculum. With this indispensable book by your side, you’ll develop practices that prioritize student well-being and success.

“For thousands of years people have been using the skills we describe in this book to engage in conversations with others. What isn’t as prevalent, however, is instruction--especially in primary grades—in which we engage students in productive conversations about academic ideas. This book fills that very big need.” --Jeff Zwiers & Sara Hamerla Talk about content mastery . . . Primary teachers, you won’t want to miss this: if you’re looking for a single resource to foster purposeful content discussions and high-quality interpersonal engagement, then put Jeff Zwiers and Sara Hamerla’s K-3 Guide to Academic Conversations at the top of your reading list. Whether your students love to talk or not, all must be equipped with key conversation skills such as active listening, taking turns, posing, clarifying, supporting with examples, and arguing ideas. This ready resource comes packed with every imaginable tool you could need to make academic conversations part of your everyday teaching: Sample lesson plans and anchor charts Guidelines for creating effective prompts Applications across content areas, with corresponding assessments Rubrics and protocols for listening to student speech Transcripts of conversations and questions for reflection Companion website with video and downloadable resources Tens of thousands of students in the upper grades have reaped the benefits of academic conversations: high-quality face-to-face interactions, increased motivation, stronger collaborative argumentation skills, and better understanding and retention of content. The K-3 Guide to Academic Conversations is that resource for providing your primary students with the same powerful learning opportunities.