One of my favorite things about hosting this podcast is the conversations I have with my listeners who love literacy as much as I do! I was excited to see that my most popular episode yet was my 47th episode that focused on nonfiction. Whether you really love nonfiction or really need help with it, I decided to tackle one of the most challenging nonfiction reading skills in this episode, which is summarizing. It is so important to take each student’s reading skills into account while teaching those higher level skills. That’s why I’ve developed strategies that can help build confidence in al ..read more

I am SO excited to share this episode with you all because my friend, Megan Polk, joined me for a guest interview. Megan is the content creator behind The Literacy Dive Podcast and a fellow lover of reading and writing. She is my go-to resource when it comes to writing and I learned so much from her during this episode focused on keeping students engaged. One of the most popular questions I get asked is how to keep kids excited during writing activities. I can’t say I was surprised to hear that avoiding daily writing activities is not the way to go! Luckily, Megan shares some simple modificat ..read more

How did we get to episode 50 already?! I just want to say thank you so much to my listener’s that have listened to all my episodes, half my episodes, or even if this is your first! To celebrate this milestone I put a lot of thought into today’s topic in order to make it special, and after a lot of brainstorming I kept coming back to the idea of power questioning. Let’s be honest, if students aren’t interested in the text they aren’t going to participate in a discussion. If we take a step back and reflect on what we’re prompting our students with after they read, you’ll probably notice that al ..read more

If you have been tuning in each week, you know this is the last episode of the reading comprehension mini series. I have talked about various topics that were requested by my listeners or ones I found challenging when I was in the classroom. To end this month’s series I am excited to talk about my favorite nonfiction topic, which is nonfiction text structure. It wasn’t until I started teaching fourth grade that I even heard of the term nonfiction text structure. I quickly realized how important it is to teach and how it relates to so many different skills needed for nonfiction texts. I explai ..read more

Have you ever gone to Google for insight on how to teach a certain topic? You’re not the only one! Although it is convenient, I started to consider why I wasn’t going straight to the source and asking other colleagues how they tackled those topics that are difficult to teach. I hope this reading comprehension mini-series provides quick, actionable steps you can incorporate immediately! This week’s reading skill that we will be focusing on is identifying the theme of a story. I’ve come to realize that there are many ways that “theme” can be interpreted. Since everyone has different backgrounds ..read more

Today’s episode is the second of this month’s Reading Comprehension Skill Series and will be focused on main idea. More specifically, finding the main idea in nonfiction texts. I remember when I used to teach my students by using an elaborate lesson and telling them they needed to do the same. What I realized was that after all the time I spent, I wasn’t showing my students how to find the main idea themselves. Instead of showing them what I had done, I realized I should have provided them with the strategies to do it themselves. I’m sure I’m not the only one guilty of this! That’s why I’m wa ..read more

It feels like the school year just started, and yet it’s October already! I find that this is the time of the year that your routines and procedures are established and you can really dive deep into your content. For that reason, I’ve decided that the month of October I will be focusing on reading comprehension skills! There are so many reasons I decided to focus on reading comprehension this month, the number one being that these are difficult skills to teach. One of those higher level, more abstract concepts that I get asked about most is making inferences. Although it may seem like there’s ..read more

This episode will be the third and last episode in the mini-lesson mini series, although I’ll definitely be talking about them again soon! At this point you have probably thought about what you are doing during your mini-lessons and have hopefully tried some of my tips and tricks. You may want to try one more after I tell you about the mini lessons you should be teaching that aren’t related to comprehension. Many of us have heard at length how important it is for students to read at a young age. We eat, sleep, and breathe topics such as main idea, inferences, and sequencing even though these ..read more

For the second episode in the mini-lesson series, I am going to share with you my five step process to planning an effective mini-lesson. I promise that these five steps are not as hard as you think they are. Even better, they will give you confidence that you can deliver an effective mini-lesson to your students! If you have never used mini-lessons or feel like you can use a refresher course, you’ve come to the right place. I will walk you through the steps to making your mini-lesson beneficial and structured no matter what your goal is. I’ll even provide examples of some of my favorite text ..read more

I am so excited to share with you that I’ve decided to have a mini-series in September to kick off the fall! The focus is going to be mini-lessons, which is something you may have heard me talk about during my summer series. I know you’re so busy with the beginning of the school year, so I hope these short and sweet episodes are perfect for you! In my experience, many teachers use the term “mini-lessons” for varying activities within their reading block. This is actually not the case as mini-lessons are structured and follow a specific framework. During this episode I will not only explain wh ..read more