Independent and semi-independent activities (such as Literature Circles, Book Club, Project-Based Instruction, and Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction) provide students with opportunities to apply their reading and writing skills to texts of a range of difficulty.

Author-illustrator and public-school art teacher Jonathan Roth (who created the space-themed graphic novel series Rover and Speck and Beep and Bob) shares some special memories and ideas for helping readers find beauty in bugs and connect with nature through art.

As the Science of Reading movement picks up momentum, implementations are going awry. Slowing things down might be a good thing. 

While research does not show that the 4-day week results in lower reading scores, that may indicate that we’re not careful enough in our use of instructional time — providing a substantial amount of the kinds of word, fluency, comprehension, and writing instruction that results in learning.

Award-winning author and beekeeper Meghan P. Browne shares buzzworthy ideas and resources to help families to learn about insects! Her book The Bees of Notre-Dame takes you on a journey of resilience to Paris to learn about the bees who lived atop Notre-Dame and survived the fire that destroyed part of the cathedral in 2019. 

Choral reading gives students practice in reading texts aloud, but individual feedback is tough to provide. Integrate other fluency strategies — such as paired reading — that give you more opportunity to observe and respond to each student.

Philip Bunting’s delightfully playful and thoughtful nonfiction picture book, The Wonderful Wisdom of Ants, encourages kids to think twice about the six-legged scuttlers we know as ants.