Are you having a hard time keeping your students motivated? Are your students lacking in their love of reading? If you are looking for an exciting way to engage your students, look no further? Readers theatre is an exciting strategy to engage students in a fun reading activity. It involves a non-threatening environment, where students bring the text to life by using tone, expression, mood and attitude. Each character’s dialogue is performed by the students, through oral story-telling. The benefits for the students are increased confidence and fluency, intonation, gesture and tone.Â
Storyboards are FUN!
Storyboards are a fun and engaging way to get students thinking about important concepts such as identifying the theme of the text, characters, setting and illustrations. These concepts will help students identify the main elements of story structure. When there are only a few copies of picture books available, storyboards provide an excellent opportunity to teach reading comprehension skills. Storyboards also create an amazing learning opportunity for english language learners! Pictures will help strengthen students’ understanding and will also help them sequence main events in stories. Storyboards are a wonderful addition to the classroom and can be a great learning opportunity for the whole class or smaller groups of students. Find out how you can use storyboards as a fun and effective reading strategy in your own classroom in the video link below. Enjoy! 🙂
Anticipation Guides: Guide Your Readers to Greatness!
The reading strategy of “Anticipation Guides” is a comprehensive strategy that provides statements before students reading to get the children thinking about what they may be reading about, activating prior knowledge, and encourages the students to build curiosity about the new subject matter. Teachers prepare a list of statements, the students must than decided if they agree with the statement, or disagree with it. Students then move on to the reading. After the reading, students are given the list of statements again, and they can then decide to stick with their original statement answer or they can choose to agree or disagree with it. It is common that students change their opinions on some of the statements after the reading, and they often realize they have refined their understanding of the subject through this activity. This reading strategy is beneficial because it allows for students to use prior knowledge to relate to the text, and it also can be a lesson taught to encourage discussion based off of more complex issues.
Reading Logs For All!
Reading logs are a great way for students to think about the books that they are reading. Students are able to treat a reading log like a journal, where they write their reactions and opinions about the books they are reading or listening to. Reading logs also act as a great guide for teachers and parents to track their child’s reading and to see what reading level they sit at. The options of reading logs are endless! Teachers can create reading logs in a variety of ways to help their students gain better reading comprehension and understanding of what they are reading. For example, they can illustrate pictures, write favourite quotes, or talk about the plot. Reading logs give students the opportunity to be creative and explore their understanding of text and writing fluency. Reading logs can also come with some great incentives! Pairing reading with rewards in the classroom or at home can encourage longer periods of reading. By practicing reading at home, students can continue their reading practice which will make them more confident readers and writers in the future. Reading logs can be used for all ages of students, as well as being modified depending on the age and reading level of the students. Finally, there are many new reading log materials and strategies out there that can be introduced in the classroom to promote long term reading and having students meet their reading goals! Here is our video link. Enjoy!
Venn Diagrams: Help Students Think About and Analyze Books
Venn diagrams are a great teaching strategy to develop reading comprehension. They can help promote intentional thinking by providing a way for students to organize and visualize their thoughts about a reading. In this workshop video, our lego friends Pete and Jill will help explain what Venn diagrams are, describe how they can help improve reading comprehension, and list steps to utilize them in reading instruction.
Story Retelling
Story Retelling is a reading strategy that is used by the teacher to test students’ skills in oral language and comprehension. The target audience for story retelling is grades PreK to 2. Children’s language is much simpler than adults’ language, so they are not required to repeat the story with words from the story that they don’t recognize. Students are required to determine the main idea and relevant details. They are also allowed to use drawings and other visual representation to help them retell the story. In order to be proficient in story retelling, students must satisfy the following criteria:
- Name and describe all the characters.
- Include specific details about the setting.
- Explain the problem and solution.
- Describe attempts to solve the problem (Contains recalling events in order).
- Identify the theme.
In our video we will talk about the three benefits of story retelling, when and how to use this instructional strategy, and model teaching story retelling to a grade one class. Please enjoy!
SHARED READING!
Shared reading is a great way to introduce and get students engaged in the great big world of reading. Shared reading is just like it says. When we share the reading, this can be a teacher reading a story to students, students reading sections of a book together as a class, or students reading aloud one on one; whatever gets students reading and engaging with the stories around us! Most importantly shared reading should be done FREQUENTLY. Many educators recommend that for early readers, shared reading should be done every day for students in kindergarten, and at least 2-3 times a week for those in high grades up to grade 3. Through shared reading times, students learn dozens of different concepts about how language and stories work. It even promotes the normalcy and love of reading that will benefit students throughout their entire lives.
Watch a lesson here on Shared Reading ft. a special guest!