Students participate in shared reading, choral reading, and readers theater, using books by Bill Martin, Jr. Repeated readings and literary performances help students with their reading accuracy, expression, and rate.
Improving Fluency through Group Literary Performance
Read Across America Day: Celebrate a Nation of Diverse Readers
Bring the celebration of reading and literacy into your classroom, library, school, and home all year long.
Choral Reading
During choral reading, students read together orally. Repeated, supported reading helps students read with greater expression and read unfamiliar words with greater ease.
Readers Theatre
Readers Theatre integrates oral reading, literature, and the performing arts. This strategy can entice the most reluctant and disinterested reader to become engaged in reading.
Performing Poetry
Performing poetry incorporates oral reading, literature, and the performing arts. This strategy can benefit content area readers, English language learners, or learners with special needs.
Constructing New Understanding Through Choral Readings of Shakespeare
After reading The Tempest or any other play by William Shakespeare, students work in small groups to plan, compose, and perform a choral reading based on a character or theme.
BOOKMATCH: Scaffolding Independent Book Selection
This lesson will be turning heads and pages as students learn how to choose appropriate books for independent reading exercises and later evaluate their choices.
Earth Verse: Using Science in Poetry
Students shape up their reading, writing, and listening skills in this lesson by creating original diamante, acrostic, and shape poems about science.
Thoughtshots Can Bring Your Characters to Life!
Students will walk a mile in the shoes of Solomon Singer as they learn how to use flashbacks, flash-aheads, and internal dialogue to develop realistic characters.
The Big Green Monster Teaches Phonics in Reading and Writing
A big green monster helps students build their reading fluency and word recognition skills through choral reading, literacy center activities, and writing stories.
Readers Theatre With Jan Brett
Students in grades 1-2 use Jan Brett's Hedgie's Surprise for a Readers Theatre experience.
A High-Interest Novel Helps Struggling Readers Confront Bullying in Schools
Students read a work of realistic fiction about bullying and gain understanding through writing, Readers Theatre, and discussion.
What's Under the Slide? Making Inferences Using Microscopes
Students hone their critical thinking skills by learning how to make inferences from textual clues.
3-2-1 Vocabulary: Learning Filmmaking Vocabulary by Making Films
Bring the vocabulary of film to life through the processes of filmmaking. Students learn terminology and techniques simultaneously as they plan, film, and edit a short video.
Reading Idol! Bringing Readers Theatre Center Stage in Your Classroom
Students produce a Readers Theatre performance to compete to be named the Reading Idol. Students vote on the final performances and record them as podcasts.
Buzz! Whiz! Bang! Using Comic Books to Teach Onomatopoeia
This lesson is sure to sizzle, not fizzle, as students use comic strips to find onomatopoetic words, develop a vocabulary list from the words, and discuss why writers use onomatopoeia.
Writing a Movie: Summarizing and Rereading a Film Script
Lights! Camera! Action! In this lesson, students view a scene with no dialogue from E.T., write a script for that scene, and perform a dramatic reading while the scene plays.
Readers Theatre
Students develop scripts, perform, and use their voices to depict characters from texts, giving them the opportunity to develop fluency and further enhance comprehension of what they are reading.
History Comes Alive: Developing Fluency and Comprehension Using Social Studies
Let the power of imagination and inference serve as a "time machine" to bring Benjamin Franklin into the classroom! History and science come to life in a dialogue with Franklin the inventor, developed through lesson activities that incorporate research, imagination, writing, visual arts, and drama.