Reveal visual triggers for comprehension strategies

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...

Foster opportunities for students to think while reading

One of the strategies readers need to develop is the ability to think while reading. For some this does not come naturally; this needs to be fostered by the teacher. In order to get students to think about their reading, teachers need to build in deliberate opportunities for them to think while they're reading.    read more...

More than happy, glad, sad, mad

If you ask students to identify how a character is feeling in a story, you might hear one of the following four words pop up: happy, sad, glad, mad. Character emotions and traits are not something children automatically understand. To help students with this, we need to be intentional.    read more...

Engage more students with highlighter tape

West Side Middle School (Union City, IN) seventh grade teacher Carla Durham likes to engage her students with fun reader and writer tools in the classroom. One tool that she has found many uses for is highlighter tape.    read more...

Teach students to read like writers

I was visiting teachers at Bailly Elementary School (Chesterton, IN) several weeks ago and spotted a fabulous bulletin board. I grabbed my camera, shot some photos, and then caught up with the teacher responsible for this display. Gifted & Talented teacher Gloria Horn has been encouraging the development of her students' incidental vocabulary.    read more...

Frequently Asked Reading Question

What do you do with students who read ahead of the assignment and tell the rest of the class what's going to happen in the book?    read more...

Recognizing footnotes

Don’t assume students know what a footnote is. Struggling readers may wonder why there is an asterisk or a tiny little number after a word, but they often don’t ask what it’s for.    read more...

Tracking words while reading

It's not uncommon for young readers to need help following the words in a book from left to right without losing their spot. Their eyes have to be trained to hold onto a single line of text. This takes practice.    read more...

Visualizing while reading — Turning on the “mind movies”

One way to get students to "think" while reading (or "think" while being read to) is to have them visualize. If they can see what's happening, they are more apt to comprehend and remember.    read more...

Try something new — A literacy notebook

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...