It feels so good to be back in the classroom! I had the privilege of being a stay at home mom/work at home mom for ten years. During that time we grew our family from three to five and I worked hard at building a business to help teachers who struggle with the same things I did. Last year, when I accepted a second grade ELA position, I immediately researched the best books for teaching literacy! And I’m sharing them with you!
I absolutely love anything from Jeff Anderson! He does an excellent job bringing authentic mentor texts and writing together. He’s the king of the “invitation to…” approach. He wrote this book to show teachers a successful way to teach their young, emergent writers the importance of writing conventions. This book includes planning guides, real life classroom examples, and over 70 lesson plan sets to help guide teachers to using mentor texts the right way!
The Writing Strategies Book
I can’t say ENOUGH about this book. This book is great for any teacher, but it’s especially for those new teachers in their first years. Jennifer Serravallo takes over a hundred writing skills and breaks them into ten goals. She also includes real life classroom examples, teaching cues, and words/phrases that will better guide your students. This one is a MUST!
The Reading Minilessons Book
This is definitely a book you will need to ask your school to purchase. My district has implemented the Fountas and Pinnell system so this book was given to me. I love love LOVE Fountas and Pinnell so when I stepped into my class and saw it all, I knew it was going to be a good year of teaching literacy. This book consists of 190 reading mini-lessons that are broken up into four categories: management, literary analysis, strategies and skills, and writing about reading.
The Literacy Workshop
If you are unfamiliar with the workshop approach, I highly recommend this book! This book does an excellent job of explaining what the workshop approach is. It also covers the structure, how to get started, and the best time to implement it. This book also includes over 50 lesson plans to help you get started!
The Reading Strategies Book
Just like her Writing Strategies Book, this one makes the perfect pair! Jennifer collected over 300 reading skills and put them under 13 goals. Not only does she take that off your plate, but she also provides step by step strategies that will help you with your lessons!
Teach Reading with Orton-Gillingham
The hardest and but most rewarding part of teaching is meeting students where they are at. You will have students who struggle with reading and you will have students with dyslexia. This book is a must to help you with strategies to meet every learner in your classroom. This one is definitely a book I will read every summer!
Before you can implement any of these strategies, first you need to assess your students once have your classroom routines down. You can grab my Beginning of the Year Literacy Assessment for FREE by clicking the link below!
