Literacy Instruction Archives - The Teachers' Library

Keep Track of Independent Reading

Lauren Crowley — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 14:49:27 +0000

If your school requires that you keep track of students’ independent reading, if you want to encourage budding new readers with choice reading, or you want to reward students for doing copious amounts of reading outside of the required homework, I’ve mostly found the whole thing to be super onerous to keep track of. I’ve struggled with reconciling the need to hold students accountable without taxing them too much and ruining an experience that’s supposed to be fun and encourage a lifelong love of books.

I’ve slowly ebbed and flowed between different amounts of paperwork attached to independent reading, hoping to find a sweet spot that made the activity meaningful, but not tedious. This year’s competition has been the most successful yet.

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I’m sure that I will continue to search for perfection, and agonize over all the words students have claimed to have read, but may have possibly gotten away with not reading, but the attitude toward reading has so far been the most positive in all my ten years of assigning independent reading.

Here’s what I did:

I chose a theme based on one of my all time favorite books, The City of Dreaming Books (The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books is actually the sequal, but it fit the theme better), by Walter Moers.
I created a huge maze on my bulletin board for students to keep track of the pages they read.
During the first week of school, one of the ice-breaker activities we did was to make a “monster” for the independent reading competition. Each students made his or hers and I laminated them to use as game pieces to move along the labyrinth each week.
I check their independent reading logs once a week while they are working on bellwork or another independent activity.
Then we take a few minutes to move our monsters along the labyrinth!

I have to admit, it’s really a re-packaged independent reading competition, but my students seem to be reading more than previous years, and they have a positive attitude about it too!

If you’re not averse to materials rewards, you can attach certain prizes to special benchmarks in the maze. My favorite is free printable bookmarks; you can even personalize them!

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Figurative Language

Lauren Crowley — Fri, 03 Feb 2017 13:11:51 +0000

This is PowerPoint with a short game quizzing students on their knowledge of common idioms. I work with a lot of ESL students and it really helps their overall English language skills to be exposed to common idiomatic expressions. It ends with a project suggestion and some student examples.

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When playing team games with multiple choice or true or false questions, I give students these printable and laminated answer cards to hold up.

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Reading for Vocabulary

Lauren Crowley — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 14:25:43 +0000

Below is a handout I give to students when I ask them to do some independent reading. It can work in small groups and in isolated lessons, or over a longer period of independent reading.

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$downloads = array(
array(“https://www.theteacherslibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/reading-for-vocabulary.docx”,”Download Reading for Vocabulary”,”docx”,”551kb”),
array(“https://www.theteacherslibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/reading-for-vocabulary.pdf”,”Download Reading for Vocabulary”,”pdf”,”464kb”)
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Book Group Discussion Guide

Lauren Crowley — Sun, 23 Oct 2016 03:03:21 +0000

Below is a form that I use with my older or more responsible students to record their discussion and questions when doing literature circles or book groups. For younger students, I like to assign more directed roles or jobs; however, with my older students I encourage them to self-direct. This handout also helps them keep track of important quotations or imagery while they read, and they can refer back to these sheets for textual evidence when they need to write an essay.

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$downloads = array(
array(“https://www.theteacherslibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/book-group-discussion-record.pdf”,”Download Book Group Discussion Guide”,”pdf”,”206kb”),
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Close Reading Task Cards

Lauren Crowley — Wed, 19 Oct 2016 11:23:41 +0000

Below are some task cards that I have put together using MS Publisher. They are intended to be used with any fiction text: poem or prose. You can change the wording to make them more directed or text-specific by clicking within the text within the larger box. Print them and cut them out. The are intended to be two-sided, with a colorful number on one side and a corresponding close reading question on the flip side, and then laminated.

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I ask that my students respond to nearly everything in a a complete sentence, and therefore I have provided some sentence frames to get them started, and so the cards can be differentiated for ability. My students are not required to use the sentence frames, but many find them helpful.

One more note: The long fill-in-the-blank-style underscores are to indicate that yes, a written response is expected. (A few of the lettered directions ask them to re-read something closely and therefore do not require a written response.)

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array(“https://www.theteacherslibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/task-cards-general.pub”,”Download template – empty set of task cards to write on or type in, that can be used for any content area”,”pub”,”172kb”)
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Very Valuable Vocabulary Handout

Lauren Crowley — Sun, 16 Oct 2016 05:11:30 +0000

If you’d like to encourage your students to incorporate more precise, sophisticated or fun vocabulary into their writing, here is a printable resource that they can stick in the front of their binders or folders. Or you could laminate them and stick them on tables for quick and easy reference.

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What Does the Text Say?

Lauren Crowley — Tue, 26 Jul 2016 13:27:07 +0000

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Vocabulary Graphic Organizer

Lauren Crowley — Mon, 18 Jul 2016 08:08:22 +0000

Below is a no frills graphic organizer that I use to teach vocabulary. As studies indicate that a person needs to be familiar with 93% of the vocabulary in a text for full comprehension, we do a lot of vocabulary. A lot. At the beginning of the school year I make about as many copies as I can get away with and our first vocabulary lesson is creating our own personal dictionaries. I give the students card stock so they can create their own covers, either drawing or designing something digitally. We use the dictionaries all year.

Note: These are not quick. Students need between 3-7 minutes for each organizer. So one sheet of three can take up to twenty minutes for some students. However, to engage more deeply with words to fully integrate them into their working vocabularies takes time. But they can be used for homework review, group work, or once they are routine, give them a vocabulary list to do with a sub. Music pairs nicely with these, as well.

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Literacy Instruction Archives - The Teachers' Library

Keep Track of Independent Reading

Here’s what I did:

I chose a theme based on one of my all time favorite books, The City of Dreaming Books (The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books is actually the sequal, but it fit the theme better), by Walter Moers.

I created a huge maze on my bulletin board for students to keep track of the pages they read.

During the first week of school, one of the ice-breaker activities we did was to make a “monster” for the independent reading competition. Each students made his or hers and I laminated them to use as game pieces to move along the labyrinth each week.

I check their independent reading logs once a week while they are working on bellwork or another independent activity.

Then we take a few minutes to move our monsters along the labyrinth!

Figurative Language

Reading for Vocabulary

Book Group Discussion Guide

Close Reading Task Cards

Very Valuable Vocabulary Handout

What Does the Text Say?

Vocabulary Graphic Organizer