Topic: Jennifer Serravallo

Explicit instruction turns talking and writing from classroom routine into real engines of comprehension. Talking and writing is most powerful when we teach students how to build a discussion, how to choose what matters, how to jot a note that's worth revisiting, how to shape a written response with purpose.

We build knowledge through content study and thoughtful text choices, but active comprehension strategies are what let kids do something with that content so it sticks.

Planning for the demands of a text starts with assessing the text itself. Jennifer Serravallo breaks down how every text makes its own demands on a reader and how to approach it.

Our students' attention has changed, and there's research behind why. Jennifer Serravallo breaks down the active view of reading and how we can explicitly teach stamina and focus .

The five elements Jennifer Serravallo considers every time she plans a comprehension lesson. Learn more about background knowledge, vocabulary, writing about reading, strategies and prompts, and conversation.

Whole Book Comprehension is a research-based and practical approach for grades 1-6 that combines grade-level fiction and nonfiction trade books with explicit instruction and integrated assessment to help students build and expand key comprehension skills across longer texts.

Whole books make different demands on readers than short texts like articles, excerpts, and short stories. If your reading program is exclusively, or mostly, built around short texts and the whole books have been shelved, it’s time to course-correct.

Over the summer, many students can lose reading and writing progress they worked so hard to build. To combat this, set your students up with books they'll actually want to read and simple writing ideas that feel more like a personal choice than a school assignment.

There's a difference between assigning writing and teaching it. When we assign writing, we give students a task and hope they write something of merit. When we teach writing, we give them the knowledge, the strategies, and the supported practice they need to grow as writers over time.

What is explicit instruction? How can reading and writing strategies help with this approach?

Celebrate Poetry Month with this collection of books, videos, blogs, and podcasts that provide support for teaching and learning poetry. 

On tests, students may encounter unfamiliar academic vocabulary in questions, face text structures they haven't learned to navigate, or need to cite evidence in ways they haven't been explicitly taught. But these are teachable skills!

How do I lead effective small group instruction? How do I make reading and writing small group instruction work?

Providing students with the right amount of support at the right moment is key to ensuring that they can transfer their learning.

To connect reading and writing skills, make the connection between encoding and decoding; explore deeper meaning through themes; say it with punctuation; interpret punctuation cues; and study the art of word choice.

For a substitute or guest teacher situation, The Reading and Writing Strategies Books make it simple through minimal prep work, flexibility, built-in differentiation, and more.

How do strategies help me differentiate instruction to better meet the needs of my students?

The Reading Strategies Book 2.0 helps you match lesson objectives to strategies; match standards to skill progressions and relevant strategies; and review student work to determine best strategies.