Technically, this isn’t a read-aloud ritual, but it definitely counts as a reading ritual. And it’s a favorite in my friend Jennie’s 5th and 6th grade classrooms. During independent reading time students silently read books of choice as they do every other day, except they read by the light of their flashlights!
Reading Motivation
Read Aloud Rituals: Poetry Pause
In his book Learning Under the Influence of Language and Literature Lester Laminack advocates six read-aloud opportunities that we can incorporate into our classroom routines: To build community at the beginning of each day. To put the sound of written language in the air. This reading time features books or other selections with lyrical language, …
Read More about Read Aloud Rituals: Poetry Pause
Read-Aloud Rituals: New Author Introduction
In a previous post I described my students’ favorite read-aloud ritual called “Choose a Book”. Every two weeks we spotlighted a new picture book author. Prior to reading the first book by a new author, I ceremoniously introduced the author by writing their name on a book and hanging it above the chalkboard. As the year progressed, …
Read More about Read-Aloud Rituals: New Author Introduction
Read-Aloud Rituals: Choose-a-Book
Choose-a-Book was my favorite and longest running read-aloud rituals. Each morning my students were greeted with two picture books displayed on plate stands. As students arrived, they placed a unifix cube in front of the book they wanted to hear during our morning read aloud. During Morning Meeting I read aloud the book that received the most …
Read More about Read-Aloud Rituals: Choose-a-Book
Read-Aloud Rituals
In Mary Lee Hahn’s Reconsidering Read-Aloud she encourages teachers to “put read-aloud at the heart of reading instruction.” I couldn’t agree more! There are so many ways to do this, but I’d like to share one that is the best way I know to foster a community of readers–reading rituals. In her book Mary Lee …
Read More about Read-Aloud Rituals
Stealing Reading Moments
I don’t think any of us would argue that children need lots of time to read in order to become proficient, lifelong readers. There is an overwhelming amount of research that points to a correlation between “eyes on text” and reading achievement. Here is one piece of data that can be found in Richard …
Read More about Stealing Reading Moments
The Teacher’s Hot Read
In a recent post I encouraged you to share your reading lives with your students. Here is another idea to model being readers ourselves and also to spark our students’ interests in reading. I read about this idea in Steven Layne’s book Igniting a Passion for Reading. Here is how it works: Get a book stand …
Read More about The Teacher’s Hot Read
One School, One Book
I first read about this program in an issue of Reading Today, an IRA publication. As soon as I read this article, I knew I wanted to try this idea. This is a program in which one book is selected and the entire school community—parents, volunteers, and teachers—reads that book at home over the course …
Read More about One School, One Book
