Featured Articles:

Starting Up the Literacy Classroom
Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

At the beginning of the year, consider introducing strategies that will allow you to build concepts in reading throughout the year. Many of you have participated in our Launching the Writer's Workshop series and know about introducing the traits. Here are some ideas for how to "launch" your reading year. [read more...]

Yearlong Reading Bulletin Boards
Monday, April 16th, 2012

Just as students need to know the ingredients of good writing, they need to know the strategies good readers use. Building a yearlong reading comprehension bulletin board can reinforce comprehension strategies, just as a writing bulletin board reinforces the 6 Traits. [read more...]

Interest Inventories for Your Readers
Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

The beginning of the year is a great time to administer Interest Inventories with your readers. These will help you see into their lives to help you determine what they might like to read.To help you get started, here are six Interest Inventories broken by gender and grade-level appropriateness. [read more...]

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Additional Articles (organized by date):

Teach Reading Through Your Read Alouds
Wednesday, May 16th, 2012

The Read Aloud is more than simply a means of entertaining students or a way to get through a text with the whole class at the same pace. When done well, the Read Aloud is a highly-effective teaching strategy for both fluency and comprehension. [read more...]

Reading Movie Scripts
Thursday, February 23rd, 2012

Movie scripts are a powerful tool to teach predicting, questioning, visualization, characterization, point of view, irony, and more. Movie scripts require comprehension skills beyond just reading what the characters say aloud. [read more...]

Create Boy-Friendly Literacy Classrooms
Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

To entice reluctant readers, teachers may need to broaden their definition of what counts as "text." This may include shorter, more accessible texts that appeal to boys like magazines, collector or trading cards, joke books, comics and cartoons, movie scripts, online texts/websites, and graphic novels. [read more...]

Utilize Photo Files in Your Literacy Classroom
Tuesday, November 15th, 2011

Many mini-lesson ideas and literacy strategies we share at Smekens Education workshops include a concrete object, toy, or prop. That little bit of visual reinforcement can engage more students and make your instruction more effective. One of the simplest visual tools is the photograph. [read more...]

Organize a Summer Reading Program
Thursday, April 28th, 2011

With all the gains you've made in reading this year, a powerful summer reading program can help maintain and even grow students' skills until you see them again in the fall. This could be something simple with a small prize for those who read a particular number of books over the break. [read more...]

Kristina's Favorite Picture Books & Teacher Resources
Thursday, April 28th, 2011

Several teachers have asked me lately for my favorite picture books. I know I've made lists for you before of my favorites, but I don't think I've ever narrowed it down to my favorite top 10 with a short description as to why I love each one. [read more...]

More on Text Features
Monday, December 13th, 2010

Students often perceive text features as decoration or filler. They don't read text outside of the gray body paragraphs. However, text features serve a purpose. They are there to provide the reader additional information. It's imperative that students see text features as more than eye candy! [read more...]

Summer Reading for Students
Monday, October 25th, 2010

Use the last days of school before summer to whet the appetite of your readers. Brainstorm with your class a list of all the books you have read aloud this year. Then do a little Internet searching to identify other titles by the same authors. [read more...]

Weave Scary Stories into Your Literacy Instruction
Friday, October 15th, 2010

Scary stories aren't just for Halloween. In fact, some of your kids would love to read them and write them all year long. Try some of the following reading and writing resources and activities whenever your students are in the mood. [read more...]

Reveal Visual Triggers for Comprehension Strategies
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

South Adams Elementary School teacher Kristi Geimer (Berne, IN) utilized information from previous Smekens’ workshops and developed a growing bulletin board to aid her students in reading comprehension strategies she’s been targeting. [read more...]

Teacher-Parent Connection for Reading Support
Thursday, April 8th, 2010

With that in mind, we created the Reading Parent Pack, a resource full of short reading activities parents can do at home with their children. Without the at-home connection, struggling readers cannot receive the amount of support necessary to boost their reading level. Teachers [read more...]

Parent Involvement for Literacy
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

We would all agree that the more involved a parent is in a child’s life, the more likely that child is to succeed in school. But parents don’t always know what to do. Many parents struggle with how best to help and would love some simple ways they could come alongside. With that in [read more...]

Target Reading Rate with Closed Captioning
Friday, October 23rd, 2009

Reading fluency is a huge component to increasing comprehension. If students spend too much energy decoding the words, they can’t focus on what the words mean. If students read too slowly, they will never make sense of the text. Fluency is something most primary teachers [read more...]

Create a Character Life Map
Friday, October 2nd, 2009

At the beginning of the year, look to provide students with ways to brainstorm potential writing topics based on personal life experiences. Have students draw a life map plotting places, people, holidays, vacations, events, and milestones in their lives for as far back as they [read more...]

Recognizing Footnotes
Thursday, January 29th, 2009

To help students understand how to use footnotes, start by teaching them to write their own. Within their next writing, ask students to find their two best words. Have them put a tiny “1″ after the first word and a tiny “2″ after the second. At the bottom of the piece, ask each student to then write the same 1 and [read more...]

Writing Test Questions that Parallel the State Assessment
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008

Instead of having an exact answer within the multiple choice possibilities, you might be less definitive. Standardized tests often ask a “most likely” question. For example, Which of these words MOST LIKELY reflects the author’s general attitude toward life on [read more...]

Literacy Notebooks
Sunday, September 14th, 2008

Many teachers have implemented a writer's notebook concept into their classroom. But what about a reader's-writer's notebook -- a literacy notebook? Since we are trying to create writers who write for readers and readers who read like writers, then merging the two together makes sense. [read more...]

Tracking with Sticky Notes
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008

To get her students to engage in critical thinking while they read, Maureen Scane (Sunman Elementary) and her fourth grade class brainstormed for “ways to think” while reading. After they generated multiple ways and wrote them on chart paper, she then challenged her students to track [read more...]

Extreme Classroom Library Makeover
Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Need a way to revive your students’ excitement for reading? Get students involved in reorganizing your classroom library of books. Mary Hall, fourth grade teacher at Sweetser Elementary, made time for her students to root through the book tubs and reorganize them. [read more...]

Prioritizing End-of-the-year Reading Skills
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

Spring is that time of year when there are so many things bombarding the classroom teacher that it’s difficult to stay focused on the top priorities. Many of you know about the “Launch” in August & September. Well, let’s consider your “Landing” for April & May. [read more...]

Integrating the 6 Traits with a New Reading Series
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

Working with a new reading series challenges even the most seasoned teacher. With so many options and activities in some reading series, teachers try to dabble with everything just to see what works and what doesn't. Here are a couple considerations to ease the overwhelmed teacher. [read more...]