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…

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.…

Describes how to use drama to help students live through and see what they are reading, thus enjoying reading more. The workshop offers strategies for reading and writing dramatic texts. A reading and writing workshop poster on a Midsummer Night's Dream is included. A reproducible sheet allows students to use their imaginations to create dramatic…

Think-alouds during reading allow teachers to model their thinking by voicing all the things they are noticing, doing, seeing, feeling, and asking as they process the text. Inferencing is essential for students to comprehend a wide variety of texts successfully. This article describes how teachers can use think-alouds to lend their language and…

Presents suggestions for bringing reading and writing to life in the classroom and helping students develop a lifelong love of both. Includes creating a refrigerator door for displaying student work, using digital notebooks, establishing a publishing center, holding lunch-bunch meetings, binding students' writing into class collections, reading…

New research shows that certain conditions surrounding read-alouds will ensure the greatest benefits. Suggestions for getting the most out of reading aloud include: engage students' interests; make sure the books are at the right difficulty level; spend an appropriate amount of time on reading aloud; offer a range of materials to read aloud; and…

Describes how to help young readers decode multisyllabic words by providing lessons on syllable spelling patterns. The article explains what a syllable is; presents the six common syllable spelling patterns (closed, open, r-controlled, vowel team, vowel-silent, and consonant-le); and offers a lesson on close syllables. (SM)

Suggests three strategies to help students hear the sounds in words: developing phonemic awareness; explore sound/symbol relationships; and discover spelling patterns. This method is most effective if teachers continuously encourage students to think about how these strategies will help them as readers and writers. (SM)

Three assessment strategies to help elementary teachers gather information about their students' reading (and thus direct their teaching) include keeping running records of students' oral reading, requesting retellings of stories to determine students' comprehension, and talking seriously about reading with students to determine their overall…

Presents a basic vocabulary strategy to boost elementary students' reading comprehension and success. The three steps include identifying vocabulary words that students will need to comprehend the reading; preteaching only three to five words; and connecting the new words to concepts that students already know. (SM)

To motivate students to read, it is important for teachers to teach the reader, not the reading. This article presents three strategies for accomplishing this: studying the child, not the book; focusing on students' reading lives and knowing them as readers; and thinking of students as readers. (SM)

Presents two cross-checking activities to help K-3 students learn decoding. The cross-checking involves decoding by using the consonants in a word along with the context. Children learn to decode by thinking about two things simultaneously (what word would make sense in a sentence and the word's letters and sounds). (SM)

Most students who lag in reading can progress with the help of both classroom attention and individual tutoring. They do best when reading materials they enjoy and can read at a certain level. This article explains the 10 steps to successful tutoring and discusses what to do if students are nonreaders. (SM)

The most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children at home and in the classroom. At school, reading aloud is important for starting the day, presenting reading and writing mini-lessons, supporting social studies and science curricula, supporting whole-class book studies, and…

Presents two activities for building elementary school students' vocabulary skills and increasing their knowledge of phonics and spelling patterns. The primary activity involves word mapping. The intermediate activity helps students pronounce and understand unfamiliar, multisyllabic words. A reproducible page on vocabulary strategies is included.…