Latest Reading Posts from the Blog

3 Ways to Help Students Learn from Illustrations in Informational Text
Students are very used to seeing illustrations in the texts that they read. When reading fiction, illustrations can add rich details or set the mood

Stories, Poetry, & Drama: Fun, Effective Ways to Review Throughout the Year
Stories, Poetry, & Drama: Fun, Effective Ways to Review Throughout the Year Imagine…you reach the end of your fiction reading unit, your students have worked

Text & Illustrations: Why Pictures Really Are Worth A Thousand Words
Text & Illustrations: Why Pictures Really Are Worth A Thousand Words We’ve all heard the old saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words,”

Character Traits & Story Events: How to Help Students Discover a Meaningful Connection
You’ve been working with your students on understanding character traits for a while now. They are practically experts at: identifying character traits describing characters finding

Point of View: Why It’s Tricky, Why it Matters, and How to Help Students Understand
For many elementary students, the idea that other people have a different outlook on the world than their own view is pretty new! Kids tend

3 Powerful Strategies to Teach Asking & Answering Questions
Asking and answering questions come naturally to kids! Asking and answering TEXT DEPENDENT questions that can be answered with text evidence or through inference? Welllllllll…not

Central Message Made Easy: 3 Valuable Tips to Help Students “Get It”
The central message of a story is super important for students to be able to identify, but unfortunately can be a tricky concept for kids

5 Qualities Kids Need to Follow Their Dreams
As parents and teachers, one of our goals is to help our children and our students achieve their dreams and to succeed in whatever path

How To Teach Paired Texts in Five Days With a Free Reading Unit
Teaching paired texts is quite a feat. There’s so much to cover! This task can also be overwhelming for students because they’re required to integrate

Nonfiction Made Easy! 5 Tips for Hitting the Standards
Upper elementary nonfiction standards naturally scaffold with the intent to take students from recognition of nonfiction features and the author’s craft and structure to the

4 Easy Ways to Teach Your Students to Compare and Contrast Theme
Most students are pretty familiar with how to complete the task of comparing and contrasting two books on their own accurately. When we do a

5 Ways to Make Teaching Cause and Effect Fun
You see a pair of broken glasses. What happened? Why did it happen? You see an ice cream cone on the ground. What happened? Why