If you teach reading, you need this book. I'm not even kidding. You should probably stop reading this post and just go order the book....but then you can come back to us.
As soon as I opened this book and started scanning the pages, I got so excited about teaching reading. I immediately knew this book is one of those resource books that will get loved on with post-its, dog ears, and all sorts of teacher notes in the margins. It will become your best friend at the guided reading table.
My big Ah-Ha from the book is how Jennifer approaches goal setting. This book approaches goal setting in a way that I hadn't seen before. I had always given my students independent reading goals - in the form of a reading level I was hoping they would reach by the end of the year. I had also always been committed to teaching guided reading - I always thought I was pretty good at it, but the vision that Jennifer sets out in this book connects the two in such a meaningful way.
She takes goal setting beyond just giving students a set reading level we want them to get to by the end of the year. She breaks it down even further and suggests that we identify the specific set of reading skills that students need to reach those goals. In order for student to master those skills they need to have a bank of strategies to be able to apply to any text they are reading. I realized that while I was focusing my guided reading lessons on skills, I was relatively weak in teaching my students a variety of strategies connected to the skills we were focusing on. I mean is there any other way to teacher inferencing other than Background Knowledge + Text Clues = My Inference? Well, in case you didn't know, there is. Jennifer has over 300 strategies that connect to the key reading skills all elementary teachers are teaching.
In addition to giving me a new perspective on goal setting, this book is laid out in a way that makes it easy for teachers to digest.
What I love about this book:
- It provides over 300 reading strategies.
- It is super user friendly.
- Each strategy page includes a sample anchor chart.
- There are suggestions for genres and text levels included on each strategy page.
- It applies to all reading levels and genres.
I can't wait to hear what you think about it.
Happy Reading!
~Sara
