How can you help students find meaning in informational texts and become independent strategic readers and thinkers? Nonfiction Reading Power gives teachers a wealth of effective strategies for helping students think while they read material in all subject areas. Using the best children's books to motivate students, Adrienne Gear shows teachers how help students zoom-in, question and infer; find the main idea, make connections, and transform what's on the printed page. Key introductory concept lessons for each of the five reading powers provide valuable insight into the purpose of each strategy. The book also explores the particular features of nonfiction and offers lists of key books organized around strategies and subject areas.
"Reading Power" promotes reading comprehension with a wealth of effective strategies that help students think as they read. Teachers will learn how to engage students and create powerful opportunities for a more interactive, thoughtful reading experience that improves comprehension. Built around the strategies that proficient readers use - or "reading powers" - the book recognizes that teachers are implementing strategies from many sources and offers simple applications that can be incorporated in any classroom. The book is organized around five reading strategies or reading powers -- Connect, Question, Visualize, Infer, and Transform. Each chapter includes: a song or chant to use in the classroom for each power;suggestions for introducing each reading power;sequential lessons that incorporate teacher modeling, guided practice, and independent reading;ready-to-copy pages that support the sequential lessons; The book uses authentic children's literature and includes ideas for modeling demonstrations, encouraging practice, and nurturing independent reading. Extensive lists of children's books, organized around grades and reading power, with suggestions for assembling classroom book collections, are an important part of this practical book.
Ten years ago, Reading Power was launched in an elementary school in Vancouver. It has since evolved into a recognized approach to comprehension instruction being implemented across Canada, in the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden, and China. This ground-breaking approach showed teachers how to help students think while they read — connect, question, visualize, infer, and transform. Since the publication of the first edition of Reading Power, Adrienne Gear has continued to reflect on and refine her ideas about metacognition, comprehension instruction, and the Reading Power strategies. This revised and expanded edition shares these new understandings, and offers teachers new ideas, new lessons, and, of course, new anchor books to support the Reading Power principles. An ideal resource for teachers familiar to this strategic approach to teaching reading, or for those looking for new ways to connect thinking with reading.
"Nonfiction reading skills are essential to students' achievement in virtually every academic discipline. To do science, students need to read science books and articles. To study history, they need to be skilled at reading all kinds of primary and secondary documents and sources. When we help students become powerful readers of nonfiction, we help them become powerful learners. Across this unit, students will develop a solid set of nonfiction reading skills including: discerning central ideas; summarizing to create a concise version of a text;synthesizing within and across texts; building vocabulary; and reading critically to question an author's point of view and perspective. At the same time, students develop flexibility as they read across text types and transfer what they know from one type of text to the next. Throughout the unit, students learn to grow their ideas and work collaboratively around high-interest text and topics"--page 4 of cover.
Writing nonfiction is a key skill that students will need throughout their school lives, and beyond. This remarkable book is designed to help teachers develop a writing program that will enable their students to harness all of their Nonfiction Writing Powers: to Describe, to Instruct, to Compare, to Persuade, to Explain, and to Report. It illustrates ways to encourage students to write because they have something to say, and to recognize that writing well means considering intent and purpose, and choosing the best form of expression. Ideal for teaching writing in the content areas, the book includes guidance on linking writing forms to Science, Social Studies, and other subject areas.