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The Best Upper Elementary Read-Aloud Books
Reading aloud to students is so important. Even as students get older, and can read to themselves, they can still benefit from hearing someone read aloud to them. Jim Trelease wrote about this in The Read-Aloud Handbook. Students can benefit from reading books that may be above their reading level. They can benefit from having proficient reading fluency modeled for them. It can expose them to more vocabulary. It gives the whole class something to have discussions on, among other things. I gathered a list of my favorite read-aloud books for upper elementary students. Harry Potter Series by JK Rowling The Harry Potter Series is a personal favorite of mine. …
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My June 2019 Book Reviews
The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine This was my book club book this month. I personally really liked it but after reading the reviews on Goodreads, I can understand why this book could be triggering to some people. Of the negative reviews, personally, none of those things did I think of or feel while reading the book, but after reading other people comment on them I saw where they were coming from and why they would hate this book. This story was about a girl pretended to be named Amber. She develops a fake life as a sister of someone who passed away from Cystic Fibrosis in order to…
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Pre-Reading Strategies for Middle School
Teaching reading to middle school students can be difficult. There aren’t as many resources for teaching middle school reading intervention. Check out 4 Resources for Middle School Reading Intervention. It can also be difficult to find age-appropriate activities to work with students on pre-reading. K-W-L Chart This is one technique for pre-reading that does translate to older students. A K-W-L Chart is where you have the students start by listing what they know about a topic (this is the “K”). Then, you have them make a list of everything that they want to know about the topic (the “W”). And then post-reading you add the third column of everything that…
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Books for your Middle School Library
I currently teach inclusion special education in the eighth grade. When I am picking books for my classroom library, I always want to make sure I’m picking books that suit the needs of my students. Many of my students have difficulties with reading. Because of that, when I am looking for books for my classroom I like to make sure that I have books that are high-interest and 5-6 grade reading level. I do also keep books that are on grade level because I do have students who are reading on grade level. These books I have listed are high interest, but lower than eighth-grade difficulty. Harry Potter Box Set by…
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Leveled Novels on the Holocaust for Middle School Students
Each year, the ELA teacher that I co-teach with and I teach a unit on the Holocaust. This is an amazing unit that she developed long before working with me and I am just fortunate to be a part of it. This unit includes teaching them background knowledge. They explore situations where they have to decide what they would do. And, they read a book on the Holocaust and participate in book club discussions. One of the many reasons that I love this unit is because of the multitude of books there are to choose from. We can carefully select groups of students and assign them to a book that…
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4 Awesome Middle School Reading Resources
Most school districts that I am familiar with, do not have a reading curriculum to use with inclusion students in middle school that receiving pull out reading services. At my school, there is a sub-separate curriculum for reading but this does not address the specific needs of my students because they are not far enough below grade level to qualify. When I started working at my school, we did have a reading curriculum, although, no one was using it because it was stale, outdated, and the kids hated it! Because of this, I have had to find my own tools and resources to use to teach my pull out of…
