A Teaching Resources Blog
Why You Should Be Teaching Text Structures The whole purpose of reading is to make meaning – that is, to understand what we read (reading comprehension). As teachers, we want our students to understand what they are reading; it is pointless, otherwise. As they move through the school levels, we also want them to understand increasingly complex texts. So what is one effective way to
I am excited to share this blog post and explain my top five teaching resources from our Top Teaching Tasks range! There is something in our top five teaching resources for everyone! So without further ado, and in no particular order, here are out top five! NZ History Time Travel Adventure (Print and Digital) Year 3-Year 8 This NZ History Time Travel Adventures set was
In my previous blog post, What is Guided Reading? I defined guided reading and shared the research and history behind this approach to building comprehension. In this blog post, I wanted to follow-up to give you some Practical Tips for Running a Guided Reading Lesson. Not everyone is a fan of guided reading, and that’s fine (perhaps you would like to try reciprocal reading or
In this blog post, I explore the research behind our reading comprehension resources and the “why” behind the way we set out our activities. At the heart of it, here at Top Teaching Tasks, we provide reading passages and activities on engaging topics that help students to understand what they read. We do this by taking a researched-based approach, focusing on reading comprehension, rigorous texts,
A common question I see regularly in teacher Facebook groups is “What is a good classroom read-aloud novel?” so I’m here to help. In fact, I knew just WHO to ask to help. Melina from Galarious Goods is passionate about books in a way that can really not be described. She is a fountain of knowledge on all things books and is running out of
I’ve previously explained how my reading programme features four main aspects: Reading to, Shared Reading, Guided Reading, and Independent Reading. In this blog post, I answer the question: What is Guided Reading? I’ll also look at some of the research and history behind this approach to building comprehension. What is guided reading? Guided reading is a small group approach to the explicit teaching of reading
What is Reciprocal Reading? Have you heard about reciprocal reading (also known as reciprocal teaching)?  I love the way this strategy enables independent readers to work together in a self-managing team to discuss a difficult text. They teach each other and take turns leading. Let me tell you more about it! The four comprehension strategies students learn and practice are: predicting what might follow and why.
Building Content-Area Literacy into our Integrated Reading Resources I’m excited to introduce our two new integrated reading resources. These reading units help students to increase their literacy engagement and grow their understanding of texts across the curriculum (content-area literacy). For example, our Kiwi Innovators unit features interesting texts that don’t shy away from using scientific vocabulary and concepts. Our NZ Disasters unit includes a range
I am beyond excited to share with you our latest resource – a great way to explore New Zealand History in the Classroom. Imagine your students have been taken in a time machine back in time. To get back to the present day they need to complete tasks and collect mosaic tiles. Once their mosaic tile is complete, they can use the time machine to
Shared Reading is for Upper Primary, too. Often when people think of shared reading, they think of a teacher in the junior school sharing a big book with a class of 5-7-year-olds. However, I am here to tell you today that Shared Reading is for Upper Primary, too. I’ll give you a quick rundown of what shared reading is, why it is important, and how you
Beginning Teacher tips: Setting Up a Reading Program (Year 3-Year 8) Welcome to the second in our series of blog posts to support beginning teachers. When I studied teaching at University, one of the things I was most surprised with was the lack of practical advice given to teachers about the day-to-day workings of actually running a classroom. Yes, I got some “thrilling” lectures about
Kids loving learning about myths and legends from around the world. The stories are big, bold, exciting and stretch the imagination! In this blog post, I look at four reasons why you should use myths and legends reading activities in your reading and writing classroom. What is the difference between a myth and a legend? A myth is a story passed down from generation to
Reading Response activities will likely form a major part of your reading programme, whether you are running guided reading groups, a daily 5 system, literature circles or a reading workshop set up. It is time-consuming to create follow up activities for every book or text that your students read, so it is great to have ready to go activities that work across a range of genre.
It is great once students can decode the words they read on the page. However, the real power in reading comes when they can understand and interpret what they are reading. With this in mind, it is important to ensure students are engaged in their reading comprehension activities. If you are not careful, your reading program can easily become dry, repetitive, and incredibly…boring. After some
