This fantastic site has famous people reading aloud children's books. My students loved when I would use this site on the smartboard and have them listen to the story and look at the pictures. Each story also includes an activity guide and related activities that have comprehension questions about the story. If used in a whole group situation, you can either pause the story and ask the questions along the way or have them answer the questions at the end. There are many stories to choose from and students really seem to enjoy listening to someone else read to them once it awhile.

Reading Comprehension Strategies Based on Strategies That Work by Stephanie Harvey and Reading With Meaning by Debbie Miller Book Report Forms. I love this site and have used it often in my teaching career. My favorite section of this site is the reading section. The reading section has resources on early, emergent and transitional readers, book reports, story maps, reading checklists, task cards and discussion cards and much more. This site is certainly worth checking out.

Although this article is brief, it details three techniques that teachers can use to improve skills needed for informational reading. The techniques that the article details are: text impression, guided questions, and retelling pyramid. If you hope to encourage your students to read informational text and understand it, the three techniques described in the article are simple ways that can help you teach these skills to your class.

The is a website that I used often when teaching. I think this is a valuable website because it has a lot of information and resources on comprehension strategies that were helpful in the classroom. The site also has a great section on readers theater with tons of scripts to download.

Mrs. Meacham's website has a fantastic section on reader's workshop with units that focus on: front loading, fix-up strategies, connection, visualizing, questioning, determining importance, inferring, and synthesizing. Each unit has a link that takes you to the materials she uses while teaching each mini lesson. I especially like that you can print out all of the material and use it in your own classroom.

This is a great site that has tons of information about why reading aloud is important. The site also has some great printable brochures to share with parents about reading with their children.

The book 7 Keys to Comprehension by Susan Zimmermann and Chryse Hutchins is a powerful read that I would recommend for both teachers and parents that want to encourage reading for enjoyment and understanding. This book is simply written and well organized making it an easy read for teachers and parents. The book outlines the 7 key strategies that good readers use in order to create meaning. The seven key strategies are:
1.Sensory Images (creating mental images)
2. Background Knowledge
3. Questioning
4. Drawing Inferences
5. Determining Importance
6. Synthesizing
7. Fix-Up Strategies

What I really like about this book is that each chapter is designated to one of the key strategies, making it easy to look up and refer back to. Inside each chapter the authors discuss each strategy and why it is important to reading success. The authors also provide examples of how to help children at varying levels (preschool, emerging, and advanced) with each strategy. As a teacher, one of my favorite things about each individual chapter is that a list of picture books and more advance books is given to use when working on the specific strategy. I also like that at the end of each chapter, tips are provided to highlight the main idea of the chapter and simple ideas to implement the strategy are detailed.

When I was teaching first and second grade, this book was always on my bookshelf because it was so easy to pick up and refer back to when I had students that were struggling. Since each chapter included a "crafting session" that gave examples on how to launch the strategy and and follow up questions to use afterwards, this book became a helpful guide for myself when creating lessons focused on the key elements of comprehension. This was also a book that I had shared with my coworkers and parents because the strategies are used in every grade on some level and are not geared specifically for classroom use, but also for parents to use at home while reading with their children. Many times parents would ask me how they could help their child with reading and I would often lend them this book or give them strategies from this book to use at home.

In lower elementary so much time is spent on decoding skills and learning to read the words, but a huge part of reading is comprehension and although students may appear to be good readers, they may still be struggling to make meaning from the text. 7 Keys to Comprehension does a fantastic job of providing simple to use strategies that build on all aspects of reading.

Zimmerman, S., & Hutchins, C. (2003). 7 keys to comprehension: How to help your kids read it and get it. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press.

http://www.amazon.com/Keys-Comprehension-Help-Your-Kids/dp/0761515496

Terri, when I taught 2nd grade I did readers theatre with my class and they really did enjoy it. It is a great way to encourage good reading and work on what good readers do.

Zimmerman, S., & Hutchins, C. (2003). 7 keys to comprehension: How to help your kids read it and get it. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press. 7 Keys to Comprehension is a powerful read that I would recommend for both teachers and parents that want to encourage reading for enjoyment and understanding. This book is simply written and well organized making it an easy read for teachers and parents. The book outlines the 7 key strategies that good readers use in order to create meaning. What I really like about this book is that each chapter is designated to one of the key strategies, making it easy to look up and refer back to. Inside each chapter the authors discuss each strategy and why it is important to reading success. The authors also provide examples of how to help children at varying levels (preschool, emerging, and advanced) with each strategy. As a teacher, one of my favorite things about each individual chapter is that a list of picture books and more advance books is given to use when working on the specific strategy. I also like that at the end of each chapter tips are provided to highlight the main idea of the chapter and simple ideas to implement the strategy. When I was teaching first and second grade, this book was always on my bookshelf because it was so easy to pick up and refer back to when I had students that were struggling. This was also a book that I had shared with my coworkers and parents because the strategies are used in every grade on some level and are not geared specifically for classroom use, but also for parents to use at home while reading with their children. Many times parents would ask me how they could help their child with reading and I would often lend them this book or give them strategies from this book to use at home. In lower elementary so much time is spent on decoding skills and learning to read the words, but a huge part of reading is comprehension and although stude

Ross, A. & Fisher, D. (2009). Talking in class builds English learners' proficiency. California English, 14(4), 10-12. This week in class we touched on the importance of "talk" in the classroom and so when I found this article I thought it was a great connection to what we discussed in class. The article talks about the importance of purposeful talk in the classroom and how it allows students to be actively involved in the learning process. Two of the key components that must first be done by the teacher are to set a purpose and model the academic language and thinking that is needed to complete the task. After the purpose is set and the modeling is finished, student must have time to work with their peers. It is during this work time that students talk with one another using academic language and create meaning by being active learners. For me this article reminds us that "talk" in the classroom is a necessary part of the learning process for all students, not just English language learners. My classroom was always a place of active learning, a place where students were encouraged to talk about what they were learning and I found that when students could talk with their peers, they could explain the subject in a way that was meaningful and peer friendly. I also like that this article discusses ways that teachers can facilitate student talk such as, reciprocal teaching, collaborative posters ( I have never heard of this technique, but love it), and learning stations. I think that this article would be a great one to share with staff and school leaders, especially those that frown on "talk" in the classroom because there is too much learning to be done and not enough time.

I came across this article and thought I would share it with everyone. It's a short article about the importance of guided learning in every classroom.

Barrett-Mynes, J., Moran, M. J., & Tegano, D. (2010). Supporting struggling readers using interactive read-alouds and graphic organizers. Voices of Practitioners, 5(2), 1-12. This article discusses a four week study that was done in order to determine the effects that collaborative discussion and child-created graphic organizers used during read-alouds had on children's comprehension. Over the course of the study it was found that: 1. The children need less guidance from their teacher and became more collaborative with their peers in their discussions. 2. The use of graphic organizers became more child-created and required less teacher guidance. 3. Students in the study received higher scores on standardized tests. The article concludes that both collaborative discussions and child-created graphic organizers enable students to construct new knowledge and begin to organize their thinking in response to the comprehension of text. It was also found that by depending less on the the teacher for guidance, children were able to take more control and ownership of their learning. When I taught first and second grade, I loved using graphic organizers and read-alouds to help build reading and comprehension skills. I liked the fact that graphic organizers can be as creative and/or as structured as you would like. The most important factor for me is that graphic organizers can be used with any subject to help a child organizer their learning in a way that is helpful for them as learners.

I agree, it seems like the student's in the study would have had to have some prior experience with graphic organizers to be able to create their own. I loved using graphic organizers in my classroom, although with 1st and 2nd graders they were primarily teacher guided, I think that they were helpful for students to organizer their thoughts and be able to have a visual representation.