The Reading Strategies Book - Goals 1 and 2

Crystal, over at Teaching Little Miracles, mentioned how she seems like a hermit during the summer. All I can say is girl, I am with you! It takes SO MUCH EFFORT to make myself look decent and leave the house during the summer. I really do cherish these "hazy, lazy days of summer."

Anyway, on to the book! Goal 1 was interesting to me, but as an upper elementary teacher, it doesn't help me much. However, as a lead teacher of lower grades I did file these ideas away to mention as needed to those who have emergent or pre-emergent readers.

Goal 2: Focus, Stamina, Building a Reading Life

OH MY WORD! There were so many strategies that I found myself nodding my head to and saying "Yes!" as I read. So many of the strategies are things that I do myself as a reader, but would never have thought to explicitly teach to my students.

Three strategies that I plan on definitely using this year are:

2.20 Reflect on the Past, Plan for the Future - I think I will use this idea with an "in class only" reading log. This way, students will be more likely to accurately record what they read. I'm always suspicious of reading logs that are done at home. Did they REALLY read that many pages in that amount of time?

2.23 Set Page Goals - I love the simplicity of this strategy. My thought is to have students jot directly onto the sticky notes as they come to them and later add them to their reader's notebooks.

2.27 Hear the Story - This one really got to me. Again, it's something I do as a reader that I would have NEVER thought to teach as a strategy. Helping students to not just SEE what they are reading but to HEAR it through the narrator/ characters voices is a great way to get them engaged and keep them reading.

Something else that stuck out to me in Goal 2 was from the introduction. I love the idea of using an "engagement inventory" to track how well students are engaging with their reading. I am SO grateful that the author offers this and other files mentioned in this goal for free too! They are located on a blog post by the author found here Jennifer Serravallo: Focusing on Engagement

I plan on using the engagement inventory on the very first day of school.

So far I am really enjoying this book. I absolutely cannot wait to see how these strategies help my students focus on their reading, build stamina, and develop a reading lifestyle.