• Comprehension:

The comprehension book, “Revisit, Reflect, Retell,” is full to the brim with excellent resources. A few highlights for me include pages on the “inference equation,” parent resources, “VIP- Very Important Point,” sheets, and layouts for assigning a book commercial. The inference equation is easy to understand, and a great visual for explaining what you, as the teacher, are looking for when sharing inferences. The parent resources include ways to get the student interacting with the parent on reading strategies, as well as informing the parent about what is going on in their child’s classroom. These resources are not graded assignments, but more so serve as a possible segway to aid parents in the act of engaging their children in conversations about school. The pages allocated to assigning a “book commercial” assignment would be great for a middle to upper grade classroom. This engaging activity was one of my favorite to read and flesh out in my personal notes. Overall, this book has many helpful ideas/concepts that, at the very least, inspired brainstorming of some very high-potential lessons.

Hoyt, L. (1999). Revisit, reflect, retell : Strategies for improving reading comprehension. Heinemann.

• Writing:

The book, “The PreK-2 Writing Classroom: Growing Confident Writers,” included a lot of notable information on engaging younger students in the writing process. A key point for me included ensuring that we, as teachers, show genuine interest in both the work of our students, and in the students themselves. I love how the text advocated and encouraged allowing our students to experiment with their writing and spelling. I’ve never seen a text flat-out tell the reader to NOT correct spelling of our younger learners, but it makes sense. The text goes on to explain that as we teach word features, our students will organically apply their spelling knowledge as it is acquired. As a whole, the text explains best-practice concepts in an appealing way, and I feel like I gained a lot of insight into important writing pedagogical techniques.

Hansen, J. (2010). The PreK-2 Writing Classroom: Growing Confident Writers. Scholastic Inc.

• Vocabulary:

Isabel Beck’s book, “Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction,” explored what goes into a truly engaging vocabulary lesson. The overall theme I acquired was that it is our goal as teachers to get our students interacting with the vocabulary words. The book mentions many ways to do so, including (but not limited to) asking questions about the words, visualization practices, forming connections, and artistic components. It also highlighted differentiation techniques. One option for tailoring a lesson for ELL students included allowing the ELL student(s) to preview a text in their own native language before having them interact with it’s English translation. I believe the re-reading component mentioned here would fall under “best practice,” because this takes away any added stress that would otherwise be allocated toward comprehension. This also provides the student with a personal connection to the words being interacted with.

Beck, Isabel. (2013). Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction. The Guilford Press.