I‘m ashamed to admit that for many years, I rarely built in any time for independent reading. The extent of independent reading in my classroom was taking students to the library to check out a book, telling them it was due by X date, and… Read More
All posts filed under “Reading Workshop”
On Venn diagrams: What does reading look like in the real-world?
Kylene Beers posted this on her Facebook page this afternoon: When I finish reading a book, I want to think about it and talk about it, and then I want to start reading my next book. Never have I closed the covers, sighed, and said to… Read More
Favorite Goodreads: 2015 Student Edition
In the midst of my classroom prep this week, I came across the binder of letter-essays that my 9th graders wrote at the end of the year. In this binder are 75+ letters that described their favorite independent reading selections. As I paged through their letters again, I couldn’t help… Read More
Getting Out of the Way
Today I finished reading yet another pedagogy book, this time Whole Novels for the Whole Class by Ariel Sacks, an educator and English teacher in New York. Over the last ten years, Sacks and her colleagues have developed an approach to teaching novels with their students… Read More
Reading Challenges Visualized
Last week, I had the pleasure of presenting at the PA Writing & Literature Project (PAWLP) Summer Institute on using visual tools in multigenre composition. One of the visual tools that I discussed was the use of infographics. Then in my Twitter feed this past… Read More
From the Classroom: If You Build It, They Will Come: The Classroom Library
Three years ago, my first attempt at a classroom library was a collection of titles that I’d read during and after college. Well-loved copies of books like A Farewell to Arms, Pride and Prejudice, and Mrs. Dalloway sat along side more contemporary fiction I read for… Read More
A Year in Our Reading Lives: An Infographic
As the culminating project for their 9th grade year, my students created an infographic to represent their year in reading. They included the 9 books they read as part of the course (our “whole class” novels) and then any additional books they completed as part… Read More
From the Classroom: A Labor of (Book) Love, The Classroom Library
First, let me say that our school library is wonderful. Thanks to the efforts of our talented librarians, our school library is filled with many high-interest, engaging titles. I take my classes to the library regularly to give students the opportunity to hear book talks and to… Read More
Slice of Life 28: In the Best Interest of Students, Reading
I’m in the middle of (the awesome) Kelly Gallagher’s new book, In the Best Interest of Students. In it, Gallagher takes on the Common Core anchor standards and looks carefully at what works and what doesn’t work. I just finished the section on best practices in reading,… Read More
From the Classroom: How do we build our students’ readerly lives?
A few years ago, I read Kelly Gallagher’s Readicide, and since then, I’ve had to ask myself some tough questions about how and why I teach literature. This passage, in particular, continues to haunt me: Shouldn’t schools be the place where students interact with interesting books? Shouldn’t… Read More
Tricia Ebarvia 
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