“Well, that was a great minilesson–now what?” For every teacher who has uttered those words, this book is for you. In What Do I Teach Readers Tomorrow? Nonfiction, educators Gravity Goldberg and Renee Houser take the guesswork out of determining students’ needs with a moment-to-moment guide focused on the decisions that make the biggest impact on readers’ skill development. With the authors’ guidance, you put their next-step resources into action, including • Tips for what to look for and listen for in reading notebook entries and conversations about books • Reproducible Clipboard Notes pages that help you decide whether to reinforce a current type of thinking, teach a new type of thinking, or apply a current type of thinking to a new text • More than 30 lessons on synthesizing information and understanding perspectives, writing about reading, organizing thinking, and more • Reading notebook entries and sample classroom conversations to use as benchmarks • Strategies for deepening the three most prevalent types of thinking students do when synthesizing: Right-Now Thinking (on the page), Over-Time Thinking (across a picture book, a chapter, or longer text), or Refining Thinking (nuanced connections across text and life concepts) • Strategies for deepening the three most useful types of thinking–feelings, frames, and opinions–when considering perspectives • Online video clips of Renee and Gravity teaching, conferring, and “thin slicing” what nonfiction readers need next With What Do I Teach Readers Tomorrow? Nonfiction, you learn to trust your instincts and trust your students to provide you with information about the next steps that make the most sense for them. Teaching students to engage with and understand nonfiction becomes personal, purposeful, and a homegrown process that you can replicate from year to year and student to student.

Decisions About Reading Notebooks

Decisions About Reading Notebooks

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© Andrew Levine

“Every successful Piece of Nonfiction should Leave the Reader with one Provocative Thought that She or he didn’t have before.”

(William Zinsser)

Laura sat down next to a table of students and observed them for a moment. They were in the midst of independent reading and researching topics they were passionate about. One student, Toby, stopped briefly to add a few notes to a T-chart he had created in his reading notebook. After about thirty seconds of writing, he got right back into his book. A minute later, another reader at his table, Karyn, stopped and sketched an image in her reading notebook and labeled a few parts. She also returned to her reading quickly and ...

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