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5 Reasons You Need The Reading Strategies Book

July 23, 2016 by Sarah Plum(itallo) 1 Comment

5 Reasons You Need The Reading Strategies Book

I’m excited to team up with my colleagues from the Teaching Mosaic to share with you what I’ve been reading this summer – please head over to Tamara’s blog to check out all of the other fantastic posts from my “peeps”!

Chances are, you’ve seen or heard about The Reading Strategies Book by Jennifer Serravallo. It might’ve been on a colleague’s book shelf, discussed in a staff meeting or PLC, or come across one of your social media feeds. If you’ve already bought it then you’re already in on what I feel is the single best professional resource for teachers, EVER. If you haven’t, then read on (and share with a friend) for the five reasons YOU need The Reading Strategies Book.

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1. You teach readers.Basals. Balanced Literacy Model. Reading Workshop. And on and on and on. We all teach READERS.

This is the most obvious reason you need this text – you teach readers! If you (like me) teach readers – of any reading level – you need this text in your arsenal of resources. Veteran teacher, first year teacher… it matters not! This text has something for every teacher of readers in any school in any location. It doesn’t matter if you use a basal, balance literacy model, or anything else – this text is adaptable and compatible.

2. You differentiate (or want to).

Most professional texts help you differentiate reading instruction in theory. This professional text helps you differentiate in practice. In my humble opinion, there’s no more important of a subject to differentiate than reading. Reading is the key to success for our students, and if they do not receive what they need – not what the average of their classmates need – they will not experience the success they deserve.Differentiation is not a buzzword. It's a promise to each of your students to teach them, the individual.

Jennifer Serravallo has laid out this text so that you can easily target your students’ needs and differentiate in multiple settings. The text is laid out first by goal (such as fluency or identifying main idea in fictional texts), then by strategies specific to supporting that goal. The strategies are organized by a range of suggested reading levels to help you further select strategies that are just right for your students. You can also see whether a strategy is limited to a particular genre, or applicable to any genre. This organization allows you to differentiate not just within a students’ reading level, but with their strengths and weaknesses in comprehension or particular genres as well. With this text, having mixed strategy groups and the flexibility to move students frequently is a breeze.

3. You set reading goals with your readers.

Example of table of contents from The Reading Strategies Book (from Amazon.com preview).

Research tells us that goal-setting in reading is increasingly important. One of my personal goals as a teacher of readers is to improve my practice when it comes to supporting my readers. The way I’ve chosen to do that is focusing on setting specific reading goals with each of my readers — and following-up to refine and select new goals as appropriate.

Serravallo is a proponent of goal-setting, and makes it easy to use The Reading Strategies Book as your primer for your students’ goals. Her table of contents is setup by reading goals, which makes it easy to select an area of focus with your reader and follow-up with a teachable strategy. You can then track students’ progress toward their goal as they integrate each strategy into their own reading behaviors.

4. You love attractive, purposeful anchor charts.

Raise your hand if you’ve searched anchor charts on Pinterest or on Google in the recent past. Raise your hand if that past was this week. Or yesterday. Or today. My hand is held high! I am a total sucker for an attractive, purposeful anchor chart – the real key being purposeful. While I love my Mr. Sketch markers and anchor chart supplies something fierce, I love my students’ ability to repeatedly refer to an anchor chart to scaffold and support their learning even more. 

Sample page from The Reading Strategies Book of a strategy for emergent readers (from Amazon.com preview).

The vast majority of strategy lessons that Serravallo includes in The Reading Strategies Book are accompanied by a sample anchor chart for you to co-construct with students. This text is literally like having a completely organized, research-based Pinterest for readers at your fingertips. Serravallo gives you great suggestions for how to make them your own, and how to adapt them for a variety of learners (including English Language Learners like the students I teach). These anchor charts have been some of the most powerful I’ve ever had in my classroom – and students do refer to them long after you’ve completed the mini-lesson.

5. You want explicit, easy-to-implement strategies.

I love professional reading. I own a lot of professional texts. I have not, however, read them all cover to cover. What I love most about Serravallo’s The Reading Strategies Book is that you don’t need to read it cover to cover (though I have because I just love it that much). This text is made for teachers, by a teacher, to be used daily as a tool. This is not just summer reading, this is everyday reading that you put into practice!

At our twice-a-week PLCs, my team (including our administrator), often pulled out The Reading Strategies Book and utilized it to drive our small-group and whole-group reading instruction. We talked about what worked and what didn’t, what students needed which strategies, and what we need to emphasize as a whole grade level. This is an incredible text to use as a team – and it gets results.

Ready to get started?

This text is easy-to-read – you will not fall asleep, I promise! It gets straight to the point, explains each strategy, offers teaching ideas, prompts you can use with your students, “hat tips” for further reading (I loved these), and often a visual to pair with the strategy. I can’t say enough about how easy this text is to use – and how much it is used. This will not take up real estate no your bookshelf – it will take up permanent residence in your teacher bag!

  • Buy The Reading Strategies Book (or ask your administrator to!) – I bought mine on Amazon for about $40. (This is not an affiliate link – I don’t receive any kickback for sharing about this awesome text, I just love it that much!)
  • There is a wonderful Facebook group for users of the text that you can join here.
  • You can follow Jennifer Serravallo on Twitter here.
  • You can download a FREE study guide for the text here.

5 Reasons You Need The Reading Strategies Book

Filed Under: Blog, Content Areas, English Language Learners (ELLs), Everything Else, Professional Development, Reading, Special Education, Student Populations, Title I Tagged With: anchor charts, balanced literacy, link-up, mini-lessons, professional text, small-group instruction

Make the First Week a Rockin’ Success

August 17, 2014 by Sarah Plum(itallo) 6 Comments

Going into my third year I feel MUCH more comfortable than I did my first two — but I still have those beginning of the year jitters much like any teacher does!

One thing that I felt was missing my first two years was cohesion that first week of school. There are so many tasks that need to be completed — paperwork, baseline assessments, learning routines, learning and practicing procedures, getting to know you activities, etc. — but there’s nothing that really binds it all together naturally!

Last year, at the end of the first week, I swore to myself that next year — next year there’d be a theme. Bear with me here, but I have #reasons. Here are my top two:

  1. Engagement. Thematic teaching — even of procedures — ENGAGES children. And that’s the most important thing, I feel, the first week. Hooking them into the power and awesomeness of your classroom and learning!
  2. A back-up plan. When you’ve got a theme, there is SO MUCH you can do with it to extend beyond what you’ve already structured or planned. Did those lunch-line procedures take a lot less time than you’d planned? Awesome, well it’s rockstar week, so let’s have a silent air-guitar contest!

I’ve been mulling over my first week of school theme ALL summer. I’ve been eyeing some clipart sets… and brainstorming… but nothing special was happening.

Then Krista Wallden {from Creative Clips} posted her Rockstar Kids. I literally GASPED in the middle of Target. I looked kind of like this:

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I posted a little about this on Tuesday, but believe it or not {and those of you that know me will BELIEVE it!}, I couldn’t stop thinking about this theme.

So I kept creating… and creating… and creating…

And now I am SO. STINKIN’. EXCITED. about the first week of school!

 

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So that’s my little dude. Modeling his own first day sign. That I added to the pack. {Let’s just ignore the fact he’s seriously going to Kindergarten.}

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I said to William, “Which bracelet do you want to model?” and without hesitation, “THE DUDE WITH THE GUITAR!” Alright then, son!

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Guys. Guys. I originally made this craftivity and made a sample, and then I thought to myself, “Self, why don’t you make one for you?” So I totally made my own as a goal-setting/tone-setting for the year and I can’t wait to share it with my team and my kiddos! Then. Then my husband showed me a video of kids reacting to technology and stuff from when I was a kid, and I had this brilliant idea:
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I’m just going to let you soak it in for a minute. Seriously, who remembers waiting for your favorite song to come on the radio and then scrambling to hit record?! Me. This girl. And that song was totally from New Kids on the Block. I cannot wait to explain what the heck that thing is, and what a mixtape is! {Also? I totally loved reflecting on what an awesome summer this has been!}

I also — in my #can’tstopcreating glory — added a few other gems:

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I’m lovin’ the editable note paper and important dates sheet! I’m already loading mine up for Meet the Teacher so that parents have it in hand LONG before Back-to-School night! {Also, how cool is it being a Tour Manager for a week? In my mind I’m in some cool European city!}
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I also cannot wait to have parents fill out little notes of “Fan Mail” for their kiddos during Meet the Teacher! Some kids, especially those that are new to the school, really need the extra encouragement and lovin’ that first week, and I am so excited for their families to be able to provide that!
Sound Check
Our first Social Studies unit is our district Code of Behavior/Citizenship — and one of the first assessments we do is a quick check of student understanding of our rules. This really gives me an idea of who is internalizing what we’ve talked about this first week, and where I need to do the most re-teaching and re-modeling! I also made posters. Because I can’t help myself and someone needs to take away my computer. Who’s going to volunteer?
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I’m going to leave you with the VIP passes I made for myself… I’m still deciding what color ribbon to attach it with. Thoughts?

 

Filed Under: 2nd Grade, 3rd Grade, Blog, Content Areas, Decor & Themes, Grade Levels, Running a Classroom, Writing Tagged With: Back-to-School, first week activities, student engagement

About the Author

Sarah Plum(itallo) is a teacher of emerging multilinguals and 21st Century Grant coordinator in Virginia. She writes curriculum for inclusive classrooms and presents professional development on a variety of topics.

Read more about Sarah and her background in education here.

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