There are so many terrific books and therefor so many terrific read alouds.  Most of them, with a little ingenuity, can be used for various comprehension think-alouds, turn 'n talks, stop 'n jots or stop 'n acts.  What can be tricky is when you're trying to find a book for a particular comprehension strategy.  For example, if I want to do a reading workshop unit on making connections because my 1st graders have a limited understand of it, or because I want my 5th graders to go deeper into activating their background knowledge and making text-to-text and text-to-world connections that matter, then I need to find books that allow me to model the strategy through a think-aloud AND allow my students to access the material, find relevance and make thei

A list of comprehension strategies perfect for Readers Workshop mini-lesson focus ideas.

Today was the last in a series of trainings I attended with a cohort on Balanced Literacy and NUA (National Urban Alliance).  Our balanced literacy component focus for the day was guided reading.  Our thinking map of the day was a flow map.  To combine the two we discussed guided reading as three or four parts: planning, before reading/priming, during reading/processing and after reading/retaining.

After Reading

After my 'aha' moment with Comprehension Connections I bought the book all excited to put it to use. I'm an ELL support teacher with over 70 students so I don't provide the daily read alouds and mini-lessons for most of my students. More often than not I have 15-30 minutes with students to do guided reading and/or fluency work. While I haven't been able to try as much as I'd like so far, I have liked how simple the lesson ideas have been for me and students.

What are some good texts for teaching students how to make connections in reading?

Let's share our ideas! And successes!

Text to Self Connections

Wimberly Worried

Alexander and the Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Teach it:

Find some ideas for how to teach the lesson here:

http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=228

Today I had one of those 'aha' moments, not in my classroom but at a training focused on blending National Urban Alliance (NUA) strategies, like thinking maps, and balanced literacy.  A coach involved in the training demoed a series of lessons on priming students for comprehension strategies with text.  She prefaced the demo by sharing that when she taught Stephanie Harvey's Comprehension Toolkit lessons, her students never had the comments that Stephanie's students did or went away with the same level of understanding.  In retrospect, she realized that when introducing students to a comprehension strategy with the Comprehension Toolkit, she was requiring students to learn a new strategy, a new text, a new subject and a challenging