Creative Ways to Get Kids Reading

This post could also be called 

"How to Be The Coolest Reading Teacher Ever!"

Use a child's strengths in other subject areas! Interdisciplinary lessons are the most engaging and effective for all students. Most of these involve books and printables, but if you're looking for something different, see the bottom of the post - and / or leave a message. I just may have another post coming!

Read recipes and cook. This has an added bonus of teaching math and science at the same time! Read menus and restaurant reviews.

• Eat Your Math Homework: Recipes for Hungry Minds!
• The Math Chef: Over 60 Math Activities and Recipes for Kids 
• Building Real-Life Math Skills: 16 Lessons

Read comics. Here are some of our favorites: 

• Cartooning Projects
• Super One Page Math Comics
• Comic-Strip Math: Problem Solving

Read mysteries. It's easier to pay attention to details when you call them clues. Drawing conclusions is way more fun when you're solving a crime!

• Mini Mysteries

Learn globally. Read about people all over the world.

• Guinness World Records Math

Skip parts of the book! There are many books where you get to choose what happens next. Here is an awesome review as well as plot analysis of this type of literature.

• Choose Your Own Adventure Books
• You Choose Books
• You Choose: History Books (see below)

Read sports recaps and magazines. Create charts and graphs that show statistics. Discuss patterns you've noticed and predict what will happen next. 

• Sports Illustrated for Kids
• Football Math: Touchdown Acvitivies and Projects for Grades 4-8

Read diaries. 

• Dear America - historical fiction stories written from the point-of-view of young girls throughout American history
• The Royal Diaries - historical fiction written from the point-of-view of young girls throughout world history and based on real people
• My Name is America - historical fiction stories written from the point-of-view of young boys throughout American history

Read signs. Take pictures of them and write stories that include them in the plot. 

Download this page as a PDF here.

How Do I Teach Young Kids to Read?

 How Do I Teach Young Kids to Read?

If you're a new teacher or a parent of a struggling reader, you may ask yourself this question, and chances are you Googled this very question. 

Too often teacher education programs are lacking because they certification programs span a wide range of grades or because the course requirements don't spend enough time on this important topic. If you became a teacher via Alternate Route, then you likely know very little about formal reading instruction, except what you've observed (and likely remember little of) in a classroom as a student. 

Luckily, there is much research that has been done on this topic. I'll present some resources from trusted sources, such as the US Department of Education. If you're interviewing for a job and brushing up on best practices, changing grade levels, or doing professional development, I highly recommend reading these guides.

Foundational Skills to SupportReading for Understanding inKindergarten Through 3rd Grade

Teaching Struggling Readers to Tackle Math Word Problems: Effective Strategies and Practice Pages That Help Kids Develop the Skills They Need to Read and Solve Math Word Problems (Grades 3-5)

Assisting StudentsStruggling with Reading:Response to Interventionand Multi-TierIntervention for Readingin the Primary Grades 

Find more reading posts here.

Finding Just-Right Books for Kids

 Are you here because you have no idea what your child(ren) could or should be reading? Do the letters and numbers your child's teacher told you for your child's level mean jibberish or are you a teacher who has switched reading programs or are you new to teaching and starting a library? Have no fear! There are many resources out there to help you. 

This is an old guide from Scholastic that shows some of the paperbacks they've offered in the past. They are ordered by guided reading level. The chart on the first page shows correlation to grade, DRA, and Lexile levels.

Does your child have a favorite reading series that they've finished, but you're looking for something similar? Are you perusing books at the library or bookstore without having a clue what reading level they are? Download the Scholastic Book Wizard app or use the desktop website and watch the video below. 

Lexile has a hub where you can find books, level text, find word lists for grade levels, etc. I especially like the word lists for content areas like science. It helps a lot for students to preview these words to they can read and understand what a question or statement is asking because they are not words that occur frequently in other subject areas.

My classroom books are scanned into the Booksource app / website. Did you know that Fountas & Pinnell suggest that books are arranged by theme and genre instead of level? I write the levels inside the left hand corner of the books, and students see the level only after selecting the book by interest from a genre basket. I have stickers on each book to show which basket they go into, and students slip a paint stirrer with their number on it so they can remember where to put it back after checking it out. 

Remember that websites and apps are updated frequently, so some features shown in images and videos here may be slightly different when you access them. 

In the end, what really matters most is a child's interest in the book they are reading. If they don't like a book, they won't read it or won't read for comprehension. Think about what you read as an adult - recipes, magazines, newspaper articles, documents, etc. It's okay for kids to go read signs or comics or the back of baseball cards! As long as their eyes are on print, they will continue to improve as readers. 

Find more reading posts here.

Rebus Readers by Shirley Neitzel

Images not loading? Click "view desktop version" at the bottom of this post.

Shirley Nietzel is a former elementary school teacher and author of rebus books for kids. Beginning and struggling readers will love the repetition of these titles. They are wonderful for interactive read alouds, too! Most of these are a guided reading level J, which is a beginning of second grade level and DRA 18-20 with a Lexile around 420.

The main character is always spunky, which makes for a fun plot. She has written several books that we love, including:

The Bag I’m Taking to Grandma’s

Watch this book read aloud here.

This was our first book by Shirley, and it couldn't have come at a better time. We were discussing how my son's little sisters would soon be arriving, and how we would pack a bag for him to stay with his grandparents while Mom and Dad went to the hospital. He understood that he didn't need to take everything, and his stay went very smoothly.

Our Class Took a Trip to the Zoo

This is a fun book about a boy who gets into some mischief at the zoo. Rebus images include clothing items such as a coat, lunch bag, pants, a button, hat, shirt, and shoes. Animal words in the story are duck, lion, ostrich, bear, and chimpanzee.

click the images above to make a copy of the document

We’re Making Breakfast for Mother

The Jacket I Wear in the Snow

I’m Not Feeling Well Today

The House I’ll Build for the Wrens

I’m Taking a Trip on My Train

The Dress I’ll Wear to the Party

Write your own rebus reader in the same style of Shirley Neitzel! You can download these slides and print them to write and draw on, or you can create your story digitally. I put a spin on a few of her stories here. 

Click the images above or below to download.

The Night Before the Snow Day

 Are you or your "kids" (students or your actual children) anticipating or wishing for a snow day? If so, this post is for you! 

My kids and I read The Night Before the Snow Day by Natasha Wing. We talked about superstitions like putting pajamas on backwards, doing snow dances, and even putting ice cubes in the toilet. 

I decided to make some activities that I could see being used by:

• homeschoolers with kids at different levels
• classroom teachers
• substitutes
• teacher candidates for reading demo lessons that showcase differentiation

These lessons can also be done:

• during virtual learning -  independently while asynchronous or as a class or with partners
• on paper - options for writing or cutting

Like all of my Google Doc lessons, there is a linked table of contents that makes navigation easy as well as an answer key and differentiated pages!

The Ballad of Valentine

 Looking for a great upper elementary picture book read aloud for Valentine's Day? We read The Ballad of Valentine by Alison Jackson. 

This book is set to the tune of an 1884 song titled "Oh My Darling, Clementine." A young man writes a ballad chronicling his attempts to let a young woman named Valentine know he's interested in her. The story flows well, especially due to the meter and rhyme.

There are many opportunities to discuss different ways of communication before technology overtook the ones the young man tried:

• mailed letters via post office
• sent a note through trained homing pigeon
• used smoke signals from a bonfire
• tapped a message with Morse code
• rented a mail car
• paid a rider on a pony 
• wrote a message by airplane
• tied a message to a boulder

Activities to do with the book could include:

• determining cause and effect
• researching the history of the U.S. Post Office, homing pigeons, Morse code, The Pony Express, etc.
• adding other ways the man could have communicated with Valentine, such as sign language, email, phone call, text message, etc.
• differentiate which forms of communication were used in the past vs more modern ones

I recommend this book as a fun Valentine's Day activity for grades 3-5. Click the image above or this link to download the Google Doc.

Can You Say Peace?

The International Day of Peace (or World Peace Day) is celebrated annually on September 21. It is devoted to strengthening the ideals of peace, both within and among all nations and peoples.

The book Can You Say Peace? by Karen Katz teaches kids a few ways to say the word "peace" in a few different languages. Because it's pretty basic, we took it up a notch and created a Google Earth project to show the countries mentioned in the book.

Click here for the Google Earth project. Get exploring! Want a challenge for your students? Have them add other countries as well as the languages and recordings of their pronunciations. 

Here is a list from the last page of the book:

Check out these songs about peace.

A Song of PEACE for Kids by Jack Hartman

Peace, Love, + Kindness by Bari Koral

Find a word search to print here.

Austin Day

 You probably came across this post because you have a child or student named Austin. It has become a very popular name over the past few years. In fact, it was at #80 in the U.S. in 2017, when my son was born. Today is his birthday, and coincidentally also Thanksgiving. We know at least 3 boys with the name in our town! We consider our son to be someone we are definitely thankful for! Anyway, I didn't have the most common name growing up and it definitely wasn't spelled like many others with the same pronunciation. Speaking of spelling, here's a freebie for you! 

Amanda Pertl at A to Z teacher stuff created more Austin Name Printables. Snag them here!

A few weeks before my daughters were born, we had Austin Day. I had purchased a puzzle and name train from a local mom who wanted to pass them on from her ton to another little boy with the same name. This led to me trying to find books with a character with his name, and then shirts and other things. We pulled all of these things out and had a blast that day before it all became about the babies.

Below, find some of the activities we've done and personalized items we've loved. Whenever I see something on Amazon, I grab it fast because I know it may not last!

We are really into geography and travel over here. My husband was in the military in Texas among other places, and the state is one our son can spot easily on a map, despite him never being there or living in the state.

Good Night, Austin by Adam 
Gamble is one of two books listed here where Austin is a place and not a person. Our son knows he is partly named after a Texas city, and he thinks it's fun to learn about landmarks there. 

Speaking of landmarks, Austin, Lost in America is a book by Jef Czekaj. It is a "geography adventure" that helps Austin, a lost dog, find the best place for him to live in the United States. He gets through 49 states before deciding on the perfect home state. Can you guess which one it is?

The Littlest Bunny in Austin: An Easter Adventure by Lily Jacobs

Like other books of its type, this one is created for a major city (some are for states) and it includes landmarks as well as other towns near Austin, Texas. I thought it was fun for my son to learn about the area he's named for. I wouldn't say this book is a must have, but it was a cute Easter basket add.

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Here is an Austin, Texas coloring printable to go with the previously listed books!

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Written by husband - wife pair and former NFL coach tony & Lauren Dungy, the book Austin Plays Fair is one of my son's favorites. It poses the question to kids whether it's more important to win or be honest and follow the rules. Many professional athletes and coaches have gotten caught in scandals, so it's an important lesson to learn young.

Check it out here in read aloud version.

Austin's Adventures: A Friend in Space by Emily Davis

This book us definitely cute. It has rhymes and some kid-friendly information about space included throughout. It's enough to teach kids with some astronomy knowledge something without overwhelming newbies, and we liked the rhymes.

 

Austin's Unlikely Pet by Michelle F. Bradley

This book was fun for my son, who likes the idea of a pet, but not actually having one. Unlike his sister, he's not really a fan of furry things. He's really into funny stories, and this Austin's kind of silly.

A is for Austin by Li'l Llama Custom Kids Books

This one is another one of those personalized books that isn't really personalized. I got this same one for my daughter and the main difference is the name in it. Still, it's good for learning adjectives for each letter of the alphabet and wasn't outrageously expensive like some other "name" books.

Austin, You're My Everything by Miles Tucker

Another cute personalized book here, also available for the name Emma. The pictures are adorable and it has a heartwarming message to make kids feel loved.

This Austin has allergies. He has to advocate for himself and let others know what foods he is allergic to in Austin Goes to a Birthday Party and Austin's Allergies. These books are great social stories to help others navigate this situation and help advocate for others, too. It covers concepts such as epi-pens, cross-contaminations, and symptoms of exposure to allergens in a kid-friendly way. My Austin has seasonal allergies, so he can kind of relate to these concepts, but it's great for him to understand food allergies so he can support friends and family members who have them.

Download printables that go with the books here.

President Austin by Brian Eggleston

This book is a great example of why you should snap up books with your kid's name as soon as you see them. It's no longer available even though I wrote his post about two weeks ago! If you can find it, snag it. This story has a great theme about helping others (the homeless in this case).

If your child doesn't watch The Backyardigans, here's Austin! We printed this out and stuck it in a page protector. My son uses a dry erase marker to practice fine motor skills while also counting!

Here's an "Austin worksheet" Google search.