Practical suggestions are presented for developing cloze passages and using them with groups, beginning students, and dyslexic students. (SK)

The author created these engaging mini-books to help her own kindergarten students learn and practice sight words. They are now collected in one place. Each reproducible mini-book introduces one or two new sight words and reviews others, so the books are progressively more difficult. A quick assessment form helps teachers choose the book that is…

This lesson uses a text about the houseboats of Kashmir to give students practice with descriptions, compound words, and participles. The lesson plan could be adapted to tourist destinations familiar to the students. Students are asked to write a description of their homes and create a tourism brochure for their own cities or towns.

Describes a method of teaching students how to make connections between sentences that they write or read. (DD)

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Suggests using short story instruction as a way to foster a heightened awareness of the inferential process. (TJ)

Suggests that paraphrasing can be useful to promote reading comprehension skills. Finds paraphrasing for comprehension to be an excellent tool for reinforcing reading skills, such as identifying the main ideas, finding supporting details, and identifying the author's voice. Discusses how helping students see practical applications of accurately…

Expands on how a strategic reader uses text structure knowledge as an overarching strategy, a framework within which to incorporate other strategies to gain ideas from text. (MG)

Describes a game used with Chapter 1 students to develop dictionary and reading skills and to help students grasp what it means to define a word. (MG)

Suggests ways to teach reading skills in context by drawing students' attention to general text elements, such as semantics, syntactics, graphophonics, print conventions, and creativity. (MM)

Describes "Word Building," a system for teaching phonics based on students' natural tendency to seek out pronounceable word parts. Describes how one spelling pattern might be taught in a typical lesson. (SR)

Discusses how students become automatic at reading sub-skills, the indicators that can be used to determine whether a student is automatic, and the psychological mechanisms that allow students to perform complex skills automatically. Discusses implications of automaticity research for teaching reading. (RS)

One way teachers can improve students' reading comprehension is to teach them to think while reading, questioning the text and carrying on an inner conversation. This involves: choosing the text for questioning; introducing the strategy to the class; modeling thinking aloud and marking the text with stick-on notes; and allowing time for guided…

Presents a list of suggestions aimed at helping science teachers support their students' growth as readers. (JRH)

Biographies can inspire students to reach their goals and explore various literary elements (turning points, cause and effect, and figurative language). This reading and writing workshop presents resources and strategies for introducing students to biography. A student reproducible has students examine why people are their role models or mentors.…