education – Page 2 – CCIRA Professional Development Blog

Digging Deeper with Sentence Level Instruction: Teaching the Reading and Writing Connection

By: Aimee Buckner Haisten, 2026 CCIRA Featured Presenter

At the start of every school year, I felt both excitement and exhaustion. Those first weeks are filled with routines, resetting expectations, and getting a classroom community up and running again. Yet, they’re also invigorating—the chance to begin anew with fresh ideas, renewed energy, and a rekindled passion for teaching. As educators, we’re fortunate to have this cycle of continual reflection and growth embedded in our profession.

In recent years, I’ve applied this same mindset to my own practice, especially in teaching writing. I returned to the role of learner—reading research, exploring new perspectives, and reconnecting with core principles that help students develop their voice and clarity as writers. While I once focused on using notebooks to nurture student identities and launch writing projects (Stenhouse Publishers, 2005, 2009, 2013), my latest fascination has centered around the power of the sentence.

A sentence, after all, holds remarkable capacity. It can reveal a theme, capture a writer’s complex idea, or unlock deeper understanding for the reader. The research is clear – spending time on sentence level instruction – analysis and construction-is key to developing students’ writing skills (Anderson & LaRocca, 2017; Collins & Norris, 2017; Graham, 2020; Graham & Alves, 2021; Graham & Harris 2015; Hochman & Wexler, 2017; Sedita, 2023). By embracing the reciprocity between reading and writing—studying how syntax and semantics shape meaning—we can help students see sentences not as isolated grammar drills but as dynamic building blocks of language.

Too often, reading and writing are taught in silos, separated by subject blocks, test preparation, or curriculum pacing. This disconnect can obscure how closely these skills inform and strengthen each other. When we instead highlight their interconnectedness, we unlock more meaningful learning opportunities.

To bridge this gap, I’ve begun using a simple classroom routine – Sentence Digs – inspired by Anderson and La Rocca’s (2017) and Charles and Lily Fillmore’s work (2012). It follows a three-step process—Take Apart, Put Together, Apply—and it encourages students to engage deeply with language. They analyze sentence structure, explore its function and meaning, and reflect on the writer’s choices, all while remaining anchored in the texts they’re already studying.

This routine doesn’t rely on complicated materials or elaborate planning. Its power lies in the questions it prompts and the clarity it brings. Students not only gain insight into how sentences communicate meaning—they also learn how to craft their own with intention and precision. Rich, well-constructed sentences are gold mines for both readers and writers. And when we treat them as such, we give our students tools not just to comprehend the world around them, but to express their own complex ideas within it.

For example, you might be studying inventors in social studies or electricity in science and find yourself reading Bright Dreams: The Brilliant Ideas of Nikola Tesla by Tracey Dockray (2020). A sentence dig lesson might look like this:

Focus: Understanding the impact of a cause/effect sentence.

Using conjunctions to create cause/effect sentences.

Showcase Sentence: Nikola and Westinghouse were chosen | to illuminate the Chicago’s World Fair | since their AC cost much less | than Edison’s DC.

Ask: In this sentence, the author uses abbreviations that they expect the reader to know. In the context of electricity, what does AC and DC mean? AC refers to alternating current and DC refers to direct current; they both indicate how electricity is flowing through a current.

If you prefer, you can organize your chunks on sentence strips. Move them around to help students focus on one chunk and then another. You’ll move them back together later.

Apply

During this part, students quickly apply their new knowledge about the sentence to their reading and writing. These are quick efforts and may be followed up with more practice.

Discuss: Aside from earning money for illuminating the Chicago’s World Fair, why is this a significant event in Tesla’s life?
Writing Focus: Try writing your own sentence with a cause/effect sentence structure. Use the showcase sentence as your model. If you want to engage your students in sentence combining work to build cause/effect sentences, consider using or adapting this Think Sheet.

In my new book, Sentence Digs and during my conference sessions, we’ll dig into rich, well-constructed sentences exploring the routine to support comprehension and better writing. My hope is that every reader and writer, speaker and listener, student and teacher feel confident in their ability to understand and use language in a way that helps them to connect with sentences, texts, each other, and the world.

The unavoidable fact is that our school days are long but our teaching time is short. There is never enough time, so we find ourselves having to prioritize instruction. At a conference recently, a teacher asked me – how important is this work…really? Having short, weekly, explicit routines to teach syntax and semantics of sentences that carry rich meaning will not only support reading comprehension, it will also model for and support students in writing those kinds of sentences. There is gold in this reciprocity. It’s important.

About the Author:

Aimee Buckner Haisten brings over three decades of experience to the field of education, where she has served as a classroom teacher, instructional coach, literacy specialist, published author, and international consultant. Her work has reached audiences across local, state, national, and international platforms, with a focus on elevating reading and writing instruction. Aimee’s contributions have appeared in several peer-reviewed journals, and she is the author of four acclaimed titles with Stenhouse Publishers. Her forthcoming book, Sentence Digs: Teaching the Reading and Writing Connection Through Syntax and Semantics, is scheduled for release in late 2025.

True Student Voice: Helping students be better speakers

By Erik Palmer

voice

1. The sound produced in a person’s larynx and uttered through the mouth, as speech or song. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/voice

Student voice. What a hot topic! I’ve seen educational conferences with themes such as “Raising Student Voice” (NCTE) and “Speak Up! Finding and Using Our Voices in a Noisy World” (NEATE), social media posts about how to increase student voice, and educational publications with articles about student voice. “Voice” is one of the most popular educational buzz words.

Unfortunately, every single one of the mentions of student voice ignores the first and most important meaning of voice: speaking. The conference with the theme “Speak Up”? Not one strand about oral communication. The “Raising Student Voice” conference had hundreds of sessions with exactly ONE session about how to improve students’ oral communication. Think about that. What an epic fail.

When you see the word voice used by educators, it might mean choice or options as in “give students voice instead of directing their learning.” Sometimes it means opinion as in “we need to value student voice and make them feel comfortable expressing their ideas.” Sometimes it means literary style as in “Hemingway has a unique voice in his writing, and we want students to develop their voice as well.” I’m not arguing with any of those: I think we should give students choices, we should value their opinions, and we should let them have their own style. But we should also give them the gift of being able to verbalize well because when you see the word voice used by everyone else on the planet, it means what you hear.

How can so many people talk about giving students voice without thinking about oral communication? That’s the original and most important voice! How do we declare what we want? How do we express our opinions? Overwhelmingly by speaking. We say things out loud. Often, that speaking is face-to-face, but increasingly digital media is used which expands the reach and importance of verbal communication. Tragically, students don’t speak well. You’ve noticed. Good speaking is not the norm for students. As much as we value writing, speaking is by far the number one way to have an impact.

“All kids can talk already.” “Speaking is not on the Big Test.” “I have never been trained about how to teach speaking skills.” “I have activities where I make students speak so I have this covered.”

These are good excuses for ignoring the direct instruction needed to give students real voice. But the truth is, it isn’t that hard to teach students how to speak well. Just as there are specific lessons to improve writing (punctuation, capitalization, word choice, sentence structure…) and to improve math (common denominator, order of operations…) and to improve reading (setting, metaphor, plot line…) there need to be specific lessons to improve speaking.

I’ll give you one example. The biggest weakness of almost all speakers is that their talks are dull. They speak in a lifeless way. You know that it is difficult to listen to the end of any student podcast.

Lesson one: to demonstrate the importance of adding life to their voices, let students practice with phrases where the meaning can change depending on how it is said.

I don’t think you are dumb. (But everyone else does?)

I don’t think you are dumb. (You know I am?)

I don’t think you are dumb. (You think he is?)

Lesson two: Play this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ouic59Gv0x0 There is a visual of a voice with no life and a visual of a voice with life along with audio modeling the difference. You may have a hard time getting through the 81 seconds of the student’s talk, a great lesson in how weak speaking skills can kill listener interest.

Lesson three: Give a small practice speech where adding life makes a huge difference. Have different students speak encouraging each one to add lots of feeling.

One time, we had a squirrel in our house. When we opened the door to let our dog out, it ran right in. Everything got crazy! The squirrel was running all over! My mom was yelling, “Do something! Do something! Get that thing out of here.” My sister jumped on a chair and stood there crying her eyes out. My dad was chasing the squirrel with a broom from room to room. “Open all the doors!” he yelled to me. “I did already!” I yelled back. Finally, it ran out. After a minute or so, my dad started laughing. “That was interesting,” he said with a chuckle.

All three of those combined might take 40 minutes of instructional time, and every student will learn one of the keys to effective speaking. Will all students master this? Of course not, just as not all master the skills of writing or math or drawing or anything. But all will get better, and all will understand how to communicate better. Many more resources are here: pvlegs.com and in this book: www.routledge.com/9781032757575

Erik Palmer is a professional speaker and educational consultant from Denver, Colorado, whose passion for speaking has been part of every one of his multiple careers. After several years in the business world, he became a teacher, spending 21 years in the classroom, primarily as an English teacher but also as a teacher of math, science, and civics.

The author of several books, Palmer presents frequently at conferences and has given keynotes and led in-service training in school districts across the United States and around the world. He focuses on giving teachers practical, engaging ways to teach oral communication skills and showing education leaders how to be more effective communicators. Contact him here.

Boost Student Comprehension Through Intentional Movement

By Gravity Goldberg, 2026 CCIRA Conference Featured Speaker

Students spend about fifty percent of their day sitting in chairs (Paul, 2021), yet studies across disciplines have shown that movement increases attention, engagement, memory, prediction, and literal and inferential comprehension. As a field, education has not focused on the research on how intentional movement can be integral in developing comprehension for students of all ages and across contexts. Incorporating movement into lessons can boost memory, lead to more literal comprehension, help with prediction, and support understanding of metaphorical language.

Memory In Enhanced Through Movement

A series of studies found that memory is enhanced through movement. For example, undergraduate students who incorporated movement into their learning remembered sixty-six percent of the material they were studying compared to those who did not incorporate movement and only recalled thirty-seven percent (Noice et al, 2001). In another study, actors were found to remember their lines with ninety percent accuracy even months after a play ended when they learned their lines while they performed the movements that went along with them (Noice et al, 2000). The good news is that once a movement has been performed, students do not need to keep repeating the movement to get the benefit. They don’t need to move around while taking a test for example, and they will still get the support from the previous movement experiences. The original movement creates a mental “tag” that helps the students’ brain hold onto the information as important.

When teaching students to incorporate movement into their learning you can help identify what is worth remembering and then show them how to add in movement. The following table shows an example of what this might look like in a classroom.

When we want to remember…	Look For…	Try out…
Plot points for retelling	Character actions (verbs)	Making the actions the character makes with our own bodies
Main ideas in informational text	Bold words, headings, and repeated ideas	Acting out the information (ex, make your hand slither like a snake) Say the main idea while also creating a gesture to go with it (ex. draw a box in the air)
Details that support ideas	Examples, non-examples, lists, and visuals	Using your fingers to connect ideas (ex, touch the top of the finger to state the big idea and then move down your finger as you state the details)
Comparisons	Similarities and differences	Making a venn diagram with your gestures (ex. Each hand is a different item being compared so raise that hand while you say the information and put your hands together when the information is the same for both)

Literal Comprehension Is Enhanced By Movement

In one study of the Moved By Reading approach, researchers asked first and second graders to read a short passage about farm life. Half of the students in the study were given farm toys such as a barn, tractor, and cow. Periodically a light would turn on and students were asked to either reread or act out the story using the toys. After the reading, the group of readers who were asked to act out the story were better able to remember details from the story and make inferences compared to their peers who were only asked to reread. Acting out a story boosted students’ understanding by fifty percent compared to those who simply reread (Glenberg et al, 2004). In similar studies with reading math problems, Glenberg and his colleagues found that acting out the math problem’s story helped students identify information that was important for the solution.

In additional studies in the Moved by Reading approach, the researchers removed the toys that were used for acting out the passage. Instead, the group of students was asked to imagine manipulating the toys. They used this phrase “imagine manipulating the toys” because it was directly related to the actual movement the students had previously done and it made the directions clear. Again, students in the group that were asked to imagine the movement made huge gains in comprehension. This held true with third and fourth graders who read new stories, not just the ones they had previously read with the toys in hand (Glenberg et al, 2004).

The instructional implications of this approach mean it can be helpful to put out some comprehension manipulatives that students can use when first reading a text. The following table offers some suggestions for what you might offer students. Even secondary students find them helpful when reading more complex texts.

Manipulative	How Students Might Use Them
play dough	Create models, artifacts, and scenes Make comparisons of size, shape, and distance of objects created Represent pressure, tension, and experience sensory input that matches relationships
sticky note	Sequence events by using each sticky to represent an event Organize information into categories with one piece of information per sticky
blocks	Build ideas by stacking blocks to represent each idea Construct settings that character manipulatives can move within
popsicle stick	Keep track of quantities Use them as pointers Build bridges between other manipulatives
paper clips	Track quantities Build connections Use them as props when figurines reenact scenes

Prediction Is Enhanced Through Movement

We tend to think that a student’s ability to predict what will happen next is based on prior knowledge and the ability to make an inference. This is only part of what is going on. By looking at hockey and football players who are experienced with performing sport specific actions, researchers found that having physical experience performing actions that were later read about increased their comprehension (Beilock, 2015). This means that it is not just general background knowledge that can help students comprehend text but also movement experiences in their bodies. In order for a student to predict what will happen next they need to envision what is currently happening, by running it through their body’s motor system. They are imagining themselves doing the movement and their bodies are experiencing the actions on these pages as if they themselves are performing them.

While this benefit of being experienced with the actions in the text is helpful to some, it obviously does not benefit all students, especially those who don’t have the prior experience of performing similar movements. Researchers have also found that observing someone perform actions does have a positive effect on predictions. For example sports fans act out the sport they are watching in their motor system, as if they were one of the players themselves. This was shown to lead to better prediction accuracy of upcoming sports actions (Beilock, 2015). For those students whose bodies are not physically able to make the movements described in the text, they can still observe others perform them and get a benefit of motor system activation and prediction accuracy.

The following three lesson ideas can be woven into your teaching.

Model how to act out a scene. Then think aloud about how you use the acting experience to predict the next action(s). This can be done in small group lessons.
Prompt students to act out the character actions and then use that experience to predict the next action(s). This can happen during the whole class read alouds.
Prompt students to simulate the actions in their own minds (thus activating their motor system). Then have them mentally simulate what they think the next action will be (prediction).

Language Comprehension Is Enhanced Through Movement

One type of language that many students struggle with understanding is language that draws upon metaphor. Texts include this kind of language so often we may not even have it in our awareness. Take for example, this excerpt from the popular book The Wild Robot Protects, by Peter Brown (2023).

“Later, Roz lightened the mood with stories of Brightbill from when he was young. The conversation flowed smoothly until Roz brought up one particular subject” (p. 17).

Each of the bolded phrases shows an example of language that includes metaphor that can be tricky for students to understand, especially those who are still learning English. There is nothing literal about lightening the mood or flowing in a conversation, so students who read this benefit from understanding how metaphors work. This is where intentional movement fits in.

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s book Metaphors We Live By (1981) describes the ways metaphors are almost always tied to physical movement, and therefore, need to be understood in an embodied way. Take for example when we say a person is “flying high” or “down in the dumps.” These metaphors match the physical ways we carry out bodies when we are happy (we stand taller and our back and chest widen) and when we are sad (we slump down). With thousands of examples, they show this phenomenon time and again. Our language of metaphor comes from the ways we hold and move our bodies.

Since there are so many metaphors in the texts we ask students to read, they can be better understood through body movements. If we explicitly teach students to make physical movements that match the metaphors they encounter, they begin to develop the ability to interpret what they mean.

Let’s go back to the excerpt from The Wild Robot Protects. Students can create movement to match the phrase “lightened the mood” by picking up an imaginary mood and moving it upward like a cloud in the sky. They can make their hands “flow smoothly” along the table to understand flow. Partners can pick something up to show “brought up” and discuss how it felt. The key is intentional movements that take just a few seconds, but create a lasting impact on conceptual understanding. Having done this sort of work with students across grades and contexts, once they understand the process and purpose, they find it fun and helpful.

Take a look at the table that follows. It shows how you can choose some common metaphorical language and bring movement in to help teach it. This table is just one example of what it might look like. Ideally, you are also using the language that is naturally coming up in conversations or texts in your own curriculum.

A three step process for teaching metaphorical language with movement looks like this.

Pause: Pause when you come to a metaphor.
Move: Move your body to match the metaphor.
Ponder: What feeling is associated with the movement? How does it connect back to the text?

Movement Enhances Comprehension

By intentionally choosing to include movement, teachers can support students literal and inferential comprehension. These movements do not need to be separate, add-on lessons and can be attached to what teachers are already doing. As a bonus, adding in movement can boost student engagement and help keep students focused on learning. Many teachers recognize that their students are craving movement to stay regulated, using fidgets, wobble chairs, or just bouncing up and down as they read. By welcoming more movement into class, teachers can harness students’ natural need to move and help them become better readers too.

References

Beilock, S. (2015). How the body knows its mind: The surprising power of the physical environment to influence how you think and feel. Atria Books. New York.

Brown, P. (2023). The wild robot protects. First edition. New York, Little, Brown and Company.

Glenberg, A. M., Gutierrez, T., Levin, J. R., Japuntich, S., & Kaschak, M. P. (2004). The Moved by Reading studies .

Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1981). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press.

Noice, H., Noice, T., Kennedy, C. (2000). Effects of enactment by professional actors at encoding and retrieval. Memory. 353-363.

Noice, H., & Noice, T. (2001). Learning dialogue with and without movement. Memory & Cognition, 29(6), 820–827.

Paul, A.P. (2021). The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain. New York, NY: Houghton Mufflin Harcourt.Gravity Goldberg is an international educational consultant and author of eight books on teaching. Mindsets & Moves (Corwin Literacy, 2015) put her on the world stage with its practical ways to cultivate student agency, leading to speaking engagements and foreign translations of her work. She has almost 20 years of teaching experience, including positions as a science teacher, reading specialist, third grade teacher, special educator, literacy coach, staff developer, assistant professor, educational consultant, and yoga teacher. Gravity holds a B.A. and M.Ed. from Boston College and a doctorate in education from Teachers College, Columbia University. She is the founding director of Gravity Goldberg, LLC, a team that provides side-by-side coaching for teachers.

Gravity Goldberg is an international educational consultant and author of eight books on teaching. Mindsets & Moves (Corwin Literacy, 2015) put her on the world stage with its practical ways to cultivate student agency, leading to speaking engagements and foreign translations of her work. She has almost 20 years of teaching experience, including positions as a science teacher, reading specialist, third grade teacher, special educator, literacy coach, staff developer, assistant professor, educational consultant, and yoga teacher. Gravity holds a B.A. and M.Ed. from Boston College and a doctorate in education from Teachers College, Columbia University. She is the founding director of Gravity Goldberg, LLC, a team that provides side-by-side coaching for teachers. Find her latest book on movement here.

Reading Identity Matters: A Broad View of Foundational Skills

By Hannah Schneewind and Dr. Jennifer Scoggin

Recently, we sat next to a kindergartener as she read a book about all the animals that a boy sees in a pond. At the beginning of the book, she giggled and whispered, “I hope he finds an alligator.” After reading each page, she said, “And next, he will find an alligator.”

Alas, the boy never did find an alligator. Disappointed, but undeterred, this kindergarten reader announced, “I’m going to write my own book called Alligator Man.” She jumped up, grabbed some writing paper and got to work. In her finished book, the last page reads, “Then he sees an alligator. AAAAAA!!!”

We all dream of and cherish these moments when everything a student is learning comes together so beautifully and with this level of independence. These moments are within every students’ reach. How can we intentionally prepare to make these moments a regular occurrence for all students?

Teaching reading and readers is a constant juggling act. The research on the positive impact of instruction in the areas of fluency, decoding, phonemic awareness, vocabulary and comprehension is well established (Young, Paige & Rasinski, 2022) . As former first grade teachers, we know this from experience.

The research on the positive impact of agency, motivation, engagement and metacognition on reading success is equally well established (Afflerbach, 2021, Fisher et al, 2017, Guthrie et al, 1996). However, this second set of foundational skills does not garner an equal amount of attention in curriculum or in the national conversation around best practices. Again, as former first grade teachers, we know this from experience too. We remember well students who could proficiently decode multisyllabic words, and yet did not regularly show high levels of engagement in the classroom reading community. For these students, turning toward these more affective foundational skills was the key to unlocking their potential.

Can you picture students in your classroom who possess strong cognitive skills, yet might lack the confidence or motivation to put them into action?

We invite you to embrace a broad view of foundational skills that encompasses both the cognitive (phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, comprehension and fluency) and affective (agency, motivation, engagement and metacognition) aspects of long term reading success. Below we offer a quick definition of each affective foundational skill mentioned here.

Affective Foundational Skills At A Glance

Skills	What it is	Why it matters
Agency	A student’s ability to take strategic self-directed action in pursuit of self-established goals.	Students with a strong sense of agency are more likely to take ownership of their own learning. Agentive readers comprehend texts more deeply and are more likely to be engaged, independent, and confident.
Motivation	A student’s drive to read, including their purpose for reading.	Students are more likely to choose to read, have a variety of reasons for reading, and persevere through challenges. Motivated readers are more engaged.
Engagement	A student’s ability to immerse themselves in reading, including their level of cognitive effort, behavior and interest.	Students are more likely to reap the full emotional and academic benefits of reading, enjoy reading more and read with greater frequency. Engaged students are more motivated.
Metacognition	A student’s awareness of the cognitive skills readers use and their ability to put these skills into action.	Students who are metacognitive will stop reading when meaning breaks down, can flexibly use a variety of strategies, and are aware of their own strengths and next steps.

Having this broad understanding of what is “foundational” frees us to include both the teaching of reading and the teaching of readers. Of course, we need to support children as they begin to decode words, determine the main idea or discuss character traits; however, we also need to teach students to find books that they love, to be able to read for extended periods of time, to know when they no longer understand what is happening in a book and to decide which strategy to use to rediscover the plot. These two sets of skills go hand in hand.

One way to get started thinking about how cognitive and affective foundational skills work together is to turn to the concept of student reading identity. Prioritize getting to know students in this more holistic way by conducting a Discovery Conference. You can do this while you give other 1:1 assessments or anytime you are with an individual student while reading. For more on this, please see our earlier CCIRA blog post, Reflection and Discovery: The Power of Reading Identity in Independent Reading.

Now let’s consider how we might respond to this new broad understanding of students’ strengths and opportunities for growth. There are already a wealth of resources and instructional moves upon which you can rely to respond to students’ specific needs in the cognitive foundational skills. We find there are fewer such resources that explore concrete ways for teachers to respond to students’ affective needs. Here we offer moves that work to highlight and strengthen the affective foundational skills of your readers.

The good news is that you do not need to purchase any new materials or make more time in your day. Instead, you can be intentional about your language. All approaches to reading instruction include feedback. Regardless of your schools’ approach to reading instruction, we decide what to say to students and how to receive and act on the feedback they provide us. Explore the following tips about ways to intentionally teach affective foundational skills, considering which might be most impactful in your classroom:

Notice and clearly name agency, motivation, engagement and metacognition as strengths. Strengths based feedback is a powerful teaching tool that calls students’ attention to the work they are already doing, validating it as worthy of attention and working to build confidence. Highlight affective skills alongside cognitive skills to bring students’ attention to the wide range of their abilities. Here are some examples of what that feedback might sound like:
- “I noticed that you read for all of reading time today. That is important because reading a lot and for a long time is how we grow as readers. You are the kind of reader who is really motivated to keep reading, even when there are a lot of distractions.”
- “You read and reread that book so many times because you love it so much, and you recommended it to other readers in the class. Every time you reread a book, you learn something new. You are a very engaged reader.”
- “You thought a lot about what strategy you could use to figure out that really long word. You knew that you could try different strategies when one did not work. Trying different strategies is something that you can always do when you read.”
Use prompts that encourage student agency.

The types of questions we use when engaging students as readers can encourage increased agency and emphasize your belief in their ability to work through obstacles independently. When working alongside readers, encourage them to tackle obstacles by relying upon their own strengths. When students encounter challenges, rely on agentive prompts such as:

“What can you do?”
“How did that go?”
“What else can you try?”
“Did that work?”
“How do you know?”

Use prompts that highlight students’ metacognitive knowledge and use. We tend to focus on outcomes: was a student able to successfully sound out a word or not? Instead, highlight a student’s process, which increases and allows you insight into their metacognitive ability. Rely on feedback and prompts such as:
- Naming the strategy you observed the student using: “I saw that you read the word once, and then you reread the word to make sure that it made sense.”
- Ask students to reflect on their own process: “What did you do when you (name the obstacle)?”

Provide students choice whenever possible. Choice invites increased engagement and provides students with the opportunity to act agentively, making meaningful decisions about their own learning. Teach into these types of meaningful choices by naming why they are important to readers. For example, you might highlight that choosing a purpose, or why we read, is important to how we stay engaged in and make meaning from text. Consider integrating these high impact choices when possible:
- Choice of text, genre and/or author
- Choice of purpose for reading
- Choice of where to read
- Choice of with whom to read

There is no magical, best way to teach reading and readers. The effective teaching of reading relies upon expert teachers making in-the-moment decisions to meet the needs of their students. The following formula works to guide those decisions:

Cognitive Foundational Skills + Affective Foundational Skills=

Lasting Academic Success

We started this post by sharing a story of a kindergartener’s enthusiastic response to reading. While it may seem the result of a magical day when everything just clicked, in reality, this moment was a result of the careful creation of a classroom in which students’ cognitive and affective skills are intentionally and consistently nurtured.

Educators live in the world of “and.” We are teachers of reading and we are teachers of readers. We are experts in cognitive foundational skills that unlock texts and we are attune to the affective foundational skills that nurture confidence and purpose. When we embrace a broad view of these essential foundational skills, we open the door for all students to be capable and confident readers.

Citations:

Afflerbach, Peter (2021). Teaching readers (Not reading): Moving beyond skills and strategies to reader-focused instruction. New York, NY: The Guilford Press. Fisher, F., Frey, N., Quaglia, R., Smith, D., & Lande, L.L. (2017). Engagement bydesign: Creating learning environments where students thrive. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Guthrie, J.T., Meter, V., McCann, A.D., Wigfield, A., Bennett, L., Poundstone, C.C., Rice, M.E., Faisbisch, F.M., Hunt, B., & Mitchell, A.M. (1996). Growth of literacy engagement:Changes in motivations and strategies during concept oriented reading instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, (31)3, p-306-332.

Young, C., Paige, D., & Rasinski, T.V. (2022). Artfully teaching the science of reading,1st edition. New York, NY: Routledge.

Hannah Schneewind partners with teachers to design literacy opportunities that center students. She began her career as a teacher in Brooklyn, NY; she then worked as a staff developer for the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. Hannah is the co-author of Trusting Readers: Powerful Practices for Independent Reading (Heinemann).

Dr. Jennifer Scoggin collaborates with teachers to create engaging literacy opportunities for children in elementary classrooms. Jen began her career teaching first and second grades in Harlem, NY. She holds a doctorate in curriculum and instruction from Teachers College, Columbia University and has previously published two books about literacy instruction and classroom life.. Jen is the co-author of Trusting Readers: Powerful Practices for Independent Reading (Heinemann) and is the co-founder of Trusting Readers LLC.

Jen and Hannah are currently collaborating on a new book focused on reading identity to be published by Stenhouse in 2026.

From Read-Alouds to Writing Instruction

by Travis Leech and Whitney La Rocca

The Potential of Read-Alouds

A well-chosen read-aloud can be the lifeblood of a language arts classroom. Teachers can do some heavy lifting in an efficient time frame to ground students in content and prime the pump for instruction. Read-alouds could be reading the entire book to your class. But it doesn’t have to be. We can also read a chapter, a section, or even a page aloud. The important thing is that we use the text as a connection point to both listening comprehension skills and language comprehension as we model how the text is supposed to sound when read aloud. Molly Ness explains this beautifully in her book, Read Alouds for All Learners (Solution Tree, 2023):

“Before students are fluent, independent readers, listening to an expert reader is the most efficient way to build the knowledge and vocabulary that are crucial to reading comprehension. It’s been found that children’s listening comprehension exceeds their reading comprehension through about age 13 on average. That means they can take in more sophisticated concepts and vocabulary through listening than through their own reading.”

We feel that it’s important to interact with the text, modeling the thinking that we do as readers during reading and invite our students to do some thinking with it as well. It’s not enough to just simply read it aloud.

With this being said, we’ve also found potential in using this experience as a jumping off point into other literacy instruction. We’d love to share with you some of the golden nuggets we’ve unearthed, so that you can put them into practice in your own classrooms. We’re going to discuss how we would extract all the amazing potential from a read-aloud we’ve recently done for the book Bugged: How Insects Changed History, by Sarah Albee, a book that highlights important historical connections between insects and humans, both good and bad.

Beyond the Read-Aloud: Grammar Instruction

Now that the text is familiar to students, we can leverage our time and instruction by using the text to teach craft moves through a grammar and conventions lens. For example, we may share this sentence with our students as an entry point into teaching how writers provide additional information with use of parentheses:

At some point in its life cycle, an insect has three parts to its body (head, thorax, abdomen) and six jointed legs.

Using the invitation process from our Patterns of Power series, we begin by asking our students what they notice about the author’s choices in this sentence. Through conversations with partners and then the whole group, students share their thoughts. They may discuss the punctuation such as the commas, or they may share the information the author is providing. No matter what they notice, we honor and name it, discussing why Albee chose to do what she did. There is a strong possibility that the writers will, in fact, notice the parentheses, especially since it’s not something they see in every sentence, therefore sticking out even more for them. We discuss the purpose of the parentheses, why Albee chose to use them and analyze information inside of them. Through this discourse, we discover that one way writers can add additional information is through the use of parentheses.

We may share or create a focus phrase together that can be posted in our classroom and orally repeated often to act as an anchor for our students as they add this move to their toolboxes: “I use parentheses to add information efficiently.”

To deepen the awareness and understanding of this craft move, we can then find or create another example where parentheses are used in the same way and invite our students to compare and contrast this new example with the sentence from our mentor, Sarah Albee.

After this discussion, we give our students a chance to write their own through imitation, beginning with the class writing one together and then writers composing one independently. They may or may not choose to begin their sentence with the opener, At some point…

Below are two examples students wrote independently.

At some point in my day, I have to do chores (clean my room, make my bed, take out the trash) before I get screen time.

My dogs (Millie, Kimber, Ginger) love to go on walks.

We take a moment to share and celebrate their imitations as this makes them feel confident enough to continue to use this move as needed in other writing they do throughout their day and year. For example, one class was writing research reports, and this child chose to add additional information for their reader about gorillas:

Because we started with a text that was familiar to students, our writers are now able to read text as writers and use some of the moves they discover in their own writing.

Beyond the Read-Aloud: Revision Instruction

Another element of writing instruction we can extract from this text post-read aloud is bolstering revision skills through sentence combining. Using a process from our series Patterns of Revision, here is an overview of a revision lesson connected to this text.

First, we would extract a short chunk of text from the read-aloud, preferably one that includes complex ideas mashed up together (like a compound sentence, a list of ideas, appositives renaming a noun, or compound subjects or predicates). Here’s one sentence with potential from Bugged:

Eight-legged spiders, ticks, and mites are not insects.

We like this sentence because there are multiple ideas being organized together into one sentence. Our work behind the scenes would then be to pull apart these ideas into separate, stand alone sentences:

Eight-legged spiders are not insects.

Ticks are not insects.

Mites are not insects.

After we’ve selected a sentence and separated out the ideas into their own stand alone sentences, we can bring these sentences back to our students to facilitate discussion about combining these ideas together. This is how the process would break down, using the acronym DRAFT:

We’d display the sentences for students and read them aloud.
We would discuss any repeated information students see being presented to decide what we could DELETE, allowing us to combine what is left.
Students would prompt us to do work in the moment to combine the ideas:

Eight-legged spiders are not insects.

Ticks are not insects.

Mites are not insects.

To combine what is left, we would consider how we could REARRANGE the words left over, what other words and punctuation we might ADD, and if we could do anything to FORM new verbs. Students TALK it out as they create a newly combined sentence.
Students might suggest something close to the author’s original when combining the ideas together. After we complete the sentence-combining work collaboratively as a class, we compare our work to the author’s original, reflect on any similarities or difference between our combination and the author’s, and discuss how this exercise could help us in our own writing.
We might then go back into a draft of writing we’ve previously created and try looking for ways we could combine our sentences or ideas in a similar way we did so with Sarah Albee’s work.

Concluding Thoughts

Studying grammar and supporting revision are two of the many lenses we could use to revisit part of the text we used for our whole-class read-aloud. We could follow a similar process of illuminating things like figurative language or text structure in a similar manner: by revisiting a manageable chunk of text, displaying that text for students, and asking them to discuss what they notice the author doing in this portion of the text.

We believe it is through this small shift in instruction, offering space for students to observe and discuss what they notice the author does in their work, that we are building students’ cognitive structures for learning. This shift will support them in strengthening this line of inquisitive thinking and observation in their future work as readers and writers in our classroom…and beyond it!

Whitney La Rocca has been a teacher, a literacy coach, and a consultant, working with children and teachers across grade levels, schools, and districts. With a deep knowledge of content, standards, and best practices, Whitney enjoys delivering professional development and coaching teachers to support children as they develop their identities in the world of literacy.

Travis Leech is a middle school instructional coach in Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, TX. He has thirteen years of experience in education, including teaching middle school English Language Arts and as a gifted and talented specialist. He has presented about engaging literacy practices and technology integration at the district, regional, and state levels.