READING WORKSHOP

Back to Reading

Welcome to Effective Teaching Solutions Reading Workshop. Each link will take you to a new page with a list of picture books for teaching a reading skill or strategy. We've added to our list and enhanced the information to include lots of extra goodies to help you in the classroom. Each selected text includes the reading level, story treasure (a small item to give children as a memory helper for retelling the story), teaching suggestion, real world and cross-curricular connections, and the author's website (if available). We are also adding posters and printables.*Please note: All of the books are listed for each category, but we are still working on "filling in the content blanks". Please be patient with us as we continue to update the content.

	During Reading Workshop, Grades 2 & 3   What are your students doing during reading workshop? Are they actively engaged in reading and writing? Are they working on their thinking? Check out the During Reading Workshop packets to get everything you need to keep your students engaged in authentic independent reading while you are working with small groups.
	During Reading Workshop, Grades 4 & 5
	Book Scouts Reading Incentive Program This packet has everything you need to launch a classroom or library reading incentive program. Students earn badges and certificate ranks when they complete various genres on their independent reading level.

  16 Reading Worksheets for ANY Picture Book or Short Story

  Independent Reading Elementary Pack  

  Reading Workshop Pack

  Reader's Notebook Pages for Students

  Reading Lessons That Work: Author's Purpose Mini Unit

Text Connections

Text to Self     Text to Text     Text to World

Students should make connections from the text they read to themselves, other texts, and the real world. We have annotated our book list and added additional resources and links.

Predicting

Students make, adjust, and confirm predictions before, during, and after reading. Predictions motivates students to continue reading for a purpose, and helps them to make sense of the text.

Asking Questions

Students ask questions throughout reading. They make predictions and draw conclusions based on their questions and answers. Asking questions helps students to make sense of the text.

Visualizing

Students make mental pictures in their minds of the text (like a movie) as they are reading.

Visualizing Mini Lesson

Inferring

Students make inferences by using text clues and their own background knowledge to "read between the lines" in order to understand what is beyond the literal text.

Teaching Inference Mini Unit   

Inference Mini Lesson on Character's Feelings

Setting

Students identify and visualize the time and place the story takes place.

Context Clues

Students determine meaning of unknown words using context clues.

Point of View

Students are able to identify and relate to the character's (or person's) point of view.

Foreshadowing

A literary device giving clues as to what comes next. Students identify the device and use it to make predictions.

Cause and Effect

Students identify cause and effect relationships that occur in the text.

Main Idea (nonfiction)

Students identify the main idea (what the text is mostly about) of the text.

Determine Importance (nonfiction)

Students determine what is important and not important while reading (or researching) nonfiction text. They learn to filter through the text to get to the main ideas and key concepts.

Teaching Nonfiction

  Nonfiction Text Features "About Me" Booklet                     Students learn about nonfiction text features by creating a booklet about themselves using different features. This 13 page booklet includes instructions.
 

Teachers should not limit teaching nonfiction to books. Children's magazines offer a wealth of well written texts useful for teaching important reading skills as strategies such as determining importance, main idea, cause and effect, sequence of events, summarization, reading charts and graphs, and context clues. The following magazines are some of the best available.

Sequence of Events and Plot

  Reading Lessons That Work: Sequence of Events Mini Unit

  Reading Lessons That Work: Teaching Plot Mini Unit

  Plot Fiction Poster

Students recognize the sequence of events that occurs in a story, and retell those events orally, in writing, through dramatization, or through the use of visual manipulatives. As students grown in their understanding of text structures they can be introduced to plot structure.

Character Traits

Students identify and relate to a character's traits (personality traits) and feelings.

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