“Well, that was a great minilesson—now what?” For every teacher who has uttered those words, this book is for you. In What Do I Teach Readers Tomorrow? Fiction, educators Gravity Goldberg and Renee Houser take the guesswork out of determining students’ needs with a moment-to-moment guide focused on the decisions that make the biggest impact on readers’ skill development. With the authors’ guidance, you put their next-step resources into action, including
Tips for what to look for and listen for in reading notebook entries and conversations about books:
- Reproducible Clipboard Notes pages that help you decide whether to reinforce a current type of thinking, teach a new type of thinking, or apply a current type of thinking to a new text;
- More than 30 lessons on understanding characters and themes, meaningful note taking, strategy use, and more;
- Reading notebook entries and sample classroom conversations to use as benchmarks;
- Strategies for deepening the three most prevalent types of thinking about characters: Right-Now Thinking (on the page), Over-Time Thinking (across a picture book, a chapter, or a novel), or Refining Thinking (nuanced connections across text and life themes)
- Strategies for deepening the three most useful types of thinking—frames, patterns, lessons learned—about themes;
- Online video clips of Renee and Gravity teaching, conferring, and “thin slicing” what fiction readers need next.
With What Do I Teach Readers Tomorrow? Fiction, you learn to trust your instincts and trust your students to provide you with information about the next steps that make the most sense for them. Teaching students to engage with and understand fiction becomes personal, purposeful, and a homegrown process that you can replicate from year to year and student to student.
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Author Bio
Gravity Goldberg is author of Mindsets and Moves: Strategies That Help Readers Take Charge, Grades 1-8 and author of many articles about reading, writing, and professional development. She holds a doctorate in education from Teachers College, Columbia University. She is a former staff developer at Teachers College Reading and Writing Project and an assistant professor at Iona College’s graduate education program. She leads a team of literacy consultants in the New York/New Jersey region. Gravity is the author of Conferring with Readers: Supporting Each Students’ Growth and Independence (Heinemann, 2007)