Engaging reluctant readers since 2012!
I strongly believe that it is never too late to read aloud. When I taught at an alternative school, I had fifteen and sixteen-year-old boys who couldn’t wait for me to read out loud to them. It was fascinating to see them want to know what happens next. This process of reading aloud can be…
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No struggling reader will ever read a classic if they are not interested in reading at all. Struggling readers must connect with the text. This statement may seem simple enough. However, it took me a while to learn. When I taught in an alternative school, I thought I could bring the same great literature with…
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I focus on activating curiosity as I develop the plot so that predicting and inferring are natural outcomes. It can be a challenge to help struggling readers predict and infer based on what they have read. As a teacher I realized that my reluctant readers avoided predicting or inferring if they did not care about…
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It is valuable when a Hi-Lo book series inspires journaling. As a teacher, journaling has always been a key tool for me to use to engage my students in writing. However, it was not always easy to find thought provoking starters that would inspire them to write meaningful entries. I remember when I presented my…
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It is often a challenge to find Hi-Lo books that offer appropriate and meaningful text for the High School grade level. What does it mean for a book to have “appropriate and meaningful text”? As a teacher, I encountered texts that drew plot lines around cliché themes for teens. Themes that seemed age appropriate, but…
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