3 Ways to Have More Fun Teaching Reading
Do you dread teaching reading? Put off planning it because you think it will be boring or your students aren’t interested? Well let’s dive on in to my ideas to help you have more fun teaching reading lessons!
1. Use Fun Books When Teaching Reading
When we think of the criteria for choosing a mentor text for teaching reading, fun isn’t usually the first thing that comes to mind. IT SHOULD BE!
When our students have fun reading, they enjoy learning to read.
So I try to pick out books that will excite my students or excite me. You should share things that you are interested in too! They may not love cats like you do, but they will love to watch you light up while you read about them!
When looking for “fun books” think relatable and high interest. You can even let your students look around the library and suggest books for you to use in lessons. Now that really empowers them to take ownership over their learning.
Look through my mentor text blog posts linked below by skill and see what jumps out at you as something fun for your students!
Mentor Texts to teach Predicting
Teaching Synthesizing with Picture Books
2. Be silly!
Read in silly voices
Act out parts of a book
Dress up!
I cannot even tell you how excited my students get when I introduce a new member of the Comprehension Crew and come in dressed as them. You don’t need a full Halloween costume just a hat, jacket, headband or a prop can totally transform you!
When you read a book you are diving into a new world, it is helpful to bring that world out of the book into your classroom too.
A fun way to involve parents is to ask for a list of props like a purple plastic purse so support Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse. Parents are always happy to share some of the random stuff they have laying around their house for a day!
3. Preplan so can feel relaxed & confident teaching reading
I try to batch my reading planning whenever I can so that I don’t feel like I am rushing around or did not complete everything I needed to prepare for the best lesson possible.
When I start a new reading unit, I pick out what books I will use for shared reading each week and what skill to focus on. This is usually for about 2 months at a time! Of course, I make changes as needed for my students while teaching reading unit but it helps to have a plan.
I also plan out my centers at the same time. In my classroom, I like to have consistent reading centers so my students know the expectations and directions. This helps to manage the class during centers and promoting my students to be successful. I know that every week there will be a reading passage that aligns with the focus skill. So I can print out all of them for the whole unit.
I have found that it only take a couple minutes longer to copy centers for 2 months than to copy for 1 week. You know what you’ll be using just have them copied in a folder to pull it out! Save yourself the stress of when the copier is broken but you need your center papers for class in 15 minutes! Do it in advance!
When you are relaxed going into a lesson, you are calmer to give teaching reading in the moment all of your energy and attention.
Sometimes teaching reading can seem so serious and overwhelming because it is so important, but the more fun you have with it the more you AND your students will benefit from the experience.
