TTT: Reading Strategies Resource

At our welcome back staff meeting in September, our admin handed us a copy of The reading Strategies Book by Jennifer Serravallo. I’m not going to lie as they handed it out I couldn’t help but think “oh great, another resource I’m supposed to read and implement into my teaching, when am I going to have time for this?”  Bad attitude, I know.

Well, I am eating my words now.  This book has been the complete opposite.  It is amazing and I find myself diving into it often for tips and quick lessons. Let me tell you why this resource is different and awesome.

• It is SO well organized and you don’t need to read the whole book from cover to cover.  It is organized into goals so you can easily flip to a section that best suits the needs of you students. Each chapter has a two page overview where the author talks about why this goal is important, and how to know if it is right for your student.
• Each lesson or strategy within the chapter is clearly marked with whom the strategy works best with, the genre or text type, as well as the skill they will be practicing.
• There is a section on each strategy called Lesson Language.  This is an example of that specific lesson being taught.  It literally tells you word for word what to say.  I find this section to be super helpful.  Especially if you’ve been teaching the strategy for a while and the student hasn’t quite mastered it, using different language might be key to them finally catching the concept.
• Every strategy has a section called Prompts. In this section, you will find questions and comments to help guide them through practicing these strategies.

Last, and probably my favourite part, every strategy page has a visual of some sort.  It might be an example of students work, a chart you can create with your students to put up in your classroom, or just a photo of students practicing the strategy.  I love visuals and find this super helpful!

You will find this at the beginning of each chapter.  A quick way to glance at the organization of each chapter.

Here is an example of what each page looks like. 

If any of you do Daily 5 in your classroom, this resource is PERFECT for mini lessons between rounds. All you need to do is choose a strategy you want to focus on, find that chapter, and pick a lesson! There are copious amounts of lessons for you to choose from and almost all of them require minimal to no prep. #yasss

I would highly recommend you get this book in your hands especially if you are a elementary teacher. Tell your admin about it and I’m sure they would be willing to purchase it for you! In fact, send them the link to this post so they can read all about it!

Last, there is a Facebook community with over 19, 000 members!  People post about this book, ask for feedback, suggestions, tips, lessons, etc! It is amazing the kind of support that we have for each other in the teaching community- awesome! To find the group just search The Reading and Writing Strategies Book Community.

Happy Teaching!! And good luck to anyone working on report cards this week… *me

Purchase this book by clicking on the icon below!