Teaching reading does NOT have to be boring! There are many different ways to make your reading lessons engaging–whether you teach in person or virtually! I know your student will love these reading strategies.
Use Book Clubs to Teach Reading Lessons
Book clubs are one of my very favorite ways to teach reading skills while getting kids excited and engaged! It’s always more fun to practice your standards and skills with novels than just doing worksheets and taking notes.
I love using book clubs to teach reading lessons. I run book clubs a little differently than many teachers. Over the years I found that ditching the jobs and assigning graphic organizers based on your weekly reading skill is far more effective. I also choose to read the book as a group rather than assigning reading for homework. It makes the book club more exciting and feels less like work.
Check out these tips for using book clubs in the classroom. And you can read about virtual book clubs HERE.
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Keep Reading Lessons Fun with Centers
Centers are also a great way to spice up your reading lessons. They are such a fun way to read and practice different skills. And they are a great way to keep kids engaged while you are meeting with small groups.
Centers get kids up and moving. They offer kids choice by providing a variety of activities including matching, task cards, and reading response menus. These hands-on activities keep kids focused on learning one specific skill to increase their odds of success.
Learn how to easily manage reading centers.
And you can even use reading centers in a virtual reading classroom! We created centers on Google Slides that utilize similar activities to the ones used in the classroom. Students read passages and stories. They sort and match. They color code and write reading responses. And after students complete the center activities, they can turn them in through Google Classroom and you can easily see their work.
You can even use these digital centers in the classroom if you have access to Chrome books or computers. You don’t even need a full class set. A handful of devices are enough to let your kids access thee virtual centers during reading time.
And bonus . . . you won’t be breaking your back with a teacher bag stuffed full of papers to grade.
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Read Alouds
I love read alouds. I don’t care what grade you teach, students need to hear books being read to them. This is how they discover genres and authors that they want to read more of. This is how they develop a love for reading.
I read to my students every day. You can gather them on the carpet or read to them in their desks. If you have a snack time, read alouds are a great way to maximize the use of that time.
You can also record yourself reading stories and allow students to listen during reading centers or free time.
If you happen to be teaching virtually, you can use Zoom or Google Meet to share new books and read the next chapter of your read aloud. Talk about good motivation to attend class online. You can make it fun by encouraging students to bring a snack and relax while they listen to you read.
Whether you are reading in the classroom or online, make certain to share a variety of different types of books rather than reading a series to your class. Try a mystery and then read a fantasy book. This gives students a chance to discover book genres and authors that they might not have tried yet.
You can click HERE to see a list of some of my favorite chapter books to read aloud or HERE to see a list of my favorite picture books to read aloud.
Provide Choice in Reading Lessons
Almost everything is more fun when you have some choice. We like to pick food from a buffet (pre Covid of course) and we love to choose our outfit from a stocked closet.
Don’t forget to offer choice as much as possible in your reading lessons!
Some ideas for incorporating choice:
- allow students to choose their own read-to-self book
- give students a chance to vote on the next class read aloud
- allow students to choose the response to reading prompt from a menu of choices
- give them a few fonts they can choose from when typing written responses and even consider allowing them to choose colors other than black
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I hope these ideas give you some new tools to make reading extra fun in your classroom!
5 days of election activities for grades 2-5!
These are great ideas! I also love having my students respond to reading response questions using Flipgrid. It allows them to verbalize their thoughts without always having to write and works even if they are asynchronous.
Hi! I have been reading how you run ELA. I was curious if when your students that meet with you during Meet the Teacher during your centers, is that considered your RTI time or do you have a separate RTI time? Also, if it is separate, do you meet with all your groups every day for RTI?
Hi Stephanie,
I’m not sure if you’ve seen this blog post series. https://notsowimpyteacher.com/2017/08/my-ela-block-reading-centers.html This particular entry explains my reading centers and how I pulled students. I was able to set up a schedule to allow for some RTI time during certain rotation times.