Primary - Reading Magazine 2021

A selection
of useful
resources
Primary
Reading

Closing The Reading Gap
Closing the Reading Gap explores the intriguing
history and science of reading. Quigley explores the
knowledge and skills expert reading teachers need
to teach reading and to nurture pupils' desire to
read.
Quigley does an excellent job summarizing the
science of teaching reading, explaining the “mental
model” that readers construct, and offering
practical strategies.
Quigley (2020)

Comprehension & Collaboration:
Inquiry Circles in Action
Comprehension and Collaboration: Inquiry Circles in
Action provides a guide for teachers who want to
implement well-structured, student-led, crosscurricular
projects.
It lays the foundation for inquiry circles by
discussing the current research and practices
behind comprehension instruction and classroom
collaboration.
Harvey & Daniels (2004)

Disrupting Thinking:
Why How We Read Matters
Beers & Probst (2017)
In the book, Disrupting Thinking authors Beers & Probst tackle
one of teachers’ greatest challenges: student apathy. They
explain that too many students remain disengaged and reluctant
readers due to the misrepresentation they continue to receive
regarding why we read and how we should approach the texts
we read.
Disrupting Thinking is an exploration of how teachers help
students become critical thinkers.
The book presents a vision of what reading and what education
across all the grades could be. It presents new strategies and
ideas that help classroom teachers create engagement and
relevance; encourage responsive and responsible reading;
deepen comprehension and develop lifelong reading habits.

Strategies That Work
Harvey & Goudvis (2017)
Harvey and Goudvis offer new perspectives on how to explicitly
teach thinking strategies so that students become engaged,
thoughtful and independent readers.
Harvey and Goudvis tackle close reading, close listening, text
complexity, and critical thinking in a new chapter on building
knowledge through thinking-intensive reading and learning.
Other fully revised chapters focus on digital reading, strategies
for integrating comprehension and technology, and
comprehension across the curriculum.
Strategies That Work (3 rd edition) explains the research behind
comprehension and looks at 8 strategies that should be
explicitly taught to students to increase their comprehension of
text. It also provides lesson ideas and student work samples.

Reading with Presence:
Crafting Mindful, Evidence-Based
Reading Response
Marilyn Pryle offers a framework for crafting mindful,
evidence-based reading responses. Pryle argues that we can
help students find their voices and deeply understand texts
when we invite them to write and share short reading
responses. Her suggested categories for reading responses
offer students plenty of choice and the writing examples she
shares in her book illustrate students’ deep thinking about a
rich variety of texts, in a range of genres from both wholeclass
and independent reading.
Marilyn Pryle (2018)

Talk About Understanding:
Rethinking Classroom Talk to Enhance
Comprehension
Ellin Oliver Keene demystifies comprehension instruction by
describing what it can look like when readers comprehend deeply
and what it can look like when teachers aim for this deep
comprehension. This book offers the following:
• Outcomes of Understanding - These are descriptions of the
behaviours present when children understand a text
deeply, including ways to assess with and teach toward
these outcomes.
• Talk About Understanding – These are suggestions to
modify teaching language and teaching interactions to
deepen children's ability to comprehend
• From the Inside - These are video segments of Ellin in
action.
Keene (2012)

Notebook Connections: Strategies for
the Reader’s Notebook
Buckner (2009)
In Notebook Connections, Buckner focuses on - the reading
workshop, showing teachers how to support students to use a
reader’s notebooks as a place to document their thinking and
growth, to support their thinking for group discussions, and to
explore their own ideas about a text.
Buckner describes her model as flexible enough for students to
respond in a variety of ways yet structured enough to provide
explicit instruction.
Notebook Connections leads teachers through the process of
launching, developing, and fine-tuning a reader’s notebook
program.
Teacher-guided lessons in every chapter help students create
anchor texts for their notebooks using various comprehension
and writing strategies.

From Striving to Thriving:
How to Grow Confident, Capable
Readers
Harvey & Ward (2017)
This is one of the best; most engaging, and most useful
professional texts that is guaranteed to make a positive
impact on readers for generations to come.
From Striving to Thriving is a must for any teacher who strives
to make every reader a thriving reader. Literacy specialists
Stephanie Harvey and Annie Ward demonstrate how to "table
the labels" and show teachers how they can grow confident,
capable and agentive readers.
The book is part theory backed by research, part practical tips
for building a literacy-rich environment, and part lessons that
are created to support the authors' beliefs.

Disciplinary Literacy:
Inquiry & Instruction
The authors share their experiences of working for
many decades with teachers across grade levels,
conducting studies and analysing research in order
to build a more comprehensive instructional
framework that engages students in every content
area. They present a Disciplinary Literacy approach
where educators are asked to empower students to
adopt and eventually adapt the language, genres,
and modalities prized by each discipline.
Ippolitoo, Dobbs & Charner-Laird (2019)

Reading with Meaning:
Teaching Comprehension in the
Primary Grades
Reading with Meaning is a highly recommended book for
any teacher who truly wants to empower their student’s to
be a responsive, responsible and a compassionate reader.
Miller show casts her newest and best thinking around
comprehension instruction in her grade 1 classroom, the
gradual release of responsibility and planning for students’
engagement and independence.
The book is well organised and reflects Miller’s professional
experiences and judgment, her work in classrooms and
collaboration with colleagues.
Miller (2012)

The Reading Strategies Book
Serravallo (2015)
In this book Serravallo has collected 300 strategies that
teachers can use in conferences, strategy lessons and
minilessons that might include shared reading or an interactive
read aloud. This book is also useful for planning units of study.
Each strategy provides:
• teaching tips, cross-links to skills, genres, and the
Fountas & Pinnell reading levels, lesson language
described, prompts to use that encourage the reader to
do the thinking, talking, jotting as they work with the
strategy, anchor chart examples, references to other
authors and books and student work examples.

Still Learning to Read:
Teaching students in grades 3-6
Sibberson & Szymusiak (2016)
The new edition of Still Learning to Read focuses on the needs of
students in grades 3–6 in all aspects of reading workshops,
including read-aloud, classroom design, digital tools, fiction,
nonfiction, and close reading.
The book stays true to its original beliefs of slowing down and
knowing our readers, but it also considers the sense of urgency
that changing times and standards impose on classrooms.
This edition examines current trends in literacy, includes a new
section on intentional instructional planning, and provides
expanded examples of mini-lessons and routines that promote
deeper thinking about learning.
It also includes a new chapter on scaffolding for reading nonfiction
and captures Sibberson & Symusiak’s latest thinking on close
reading and text complexity.

Literacy Continuum:
A Tool for Assessment, Planning
& Teaching (Expanded EDITION)
This expanded edition enables teachers to
construct a common vision for student
achievement that effectively and efficiently engages
all students in the robust, authentic and meaningful
literacy learning.
It also provides a way to look for specific evidence
of learning from foundation to grade eight, and
across eight instructional contexts.
Fountas & Pinnell (2016)

Understanding Texts & Readers:
Responsive Comprehension
Instruction with Leveled Texts
Understanding Texts & Readers maps out the four fiction
and four nonfiction comprehension goals Serravallo
presented in The Reading Strategies Book, to fourteen text
levels. It presents sample responses that show what to
expect from readers at each.
The book explores the characteristics of both fiction and
nonfiction texts and provides support for teachers to build
an understanding of how these characteristics change as
text become more complex.
Serravallo (2018)

The Literacy Teacher’s
Playbook: Grades K-2
Serravallo (2014)
Serravallo’s book presents an approach to assessment, planning,
and teaching. She provides a four-step assessment protocol to
help develop effective differentiate reading and writing goals, and
then makes an action plan with targeted instruction alongside
students in Foundation to Year 2.
Her four-step assessment protocol is:
• collect data - student work and everyday assessments
(that will be the most useful to you)
• analyse the data to understand deeply what kids know
and can do
• synthesize data from multiple assessments to create
learning goals
• develop instructional plans and follow-ups to monitor
progress.

The Literacy Teacher’s
Playbook: Grades 3-6
Serravallo (2013)
Serravallo’s book presents an approach to assessment, planning,
and teaching. She provides a four-step assessment protocol to
help develop effective differentiate reading and writing goals, and
then makes an action plan with targeted instruction alongside
students in Years 3 - 6.
Her four-step assessment protocol is:
• collect data - student work and everyday assessments
(that will be the most useful to you)
• analyse the data to understand deeply what kids know
and can do
• synthesize data from multiple assessments to create
learning goals
• develop instructional plans and follow-ups to monitor
progress.

The Book Whisperer: Awakening
the Inner Reader in Every Child
Miller (2009)
This is a practical book for teachers. Miller provides teachers with
a variety of tools that are designed to support their students, of all
levels, on their path to reading successfully.
Miller describes the inherent need children have to engage with
books, intellectually and emotionally; she embraces giving
students choice and time to read books they pick out themselves.
Her unconventional approach is simple yet provocative:
• affirm the reader in every student, allow students to
choose their own books, carve out extra reading time,
model authentic reading behaviours, discard timeworn
reading assignments such as book reports and
comprehension worksheets, and develop a classroom
library filled with high-interest books.

Mosaic of Thought
Keene & Zimmermann (2007)
Carefully revised from the first edition published ten years ago,
this book reflects the latest thinking by Keene & Zimmerman. It
is deep, thought provoking and designed to help teachers
implement practical, thoughtful ideas for teaching
comprehension.
Seven core strategies that successful readers use to engage
with texts are also explored. Key ideas and concepts for each
strategy, new classroom examples, new tools and innovations
for think-aloud and conferring practices and included.
There is also new advice from Keene & Zimmerman as well as
an invaluable Q&A section with informed responses to
questions frequently asked by today’s teachers.

Mindsets & Moves:
Strategies that help readers take
charge
Gravity Goldberg’s book Mindsets and Moves: Strategies That
Help Readers Take Charge shows teachers how to think about
and interact with children around literacy. It is a resource that
guides teachers to help their students feel empowered to
take ownership over their reading identities.
Goldberg’s practical book has examples of lessons,
minilessons, models, tools, student sticky note examples as
well as visual examples of anchor charts.
Goldberg challenges current practices around reading and
encourages teachers to reflect and strengthen their own
identity, beliefs, and values as educators.
Goldberg (2015)

Beyond Leveled Books:
Supporting Early and Transitional
Readers in Grades K-5
Beyond Leveled Texts (second edition) is an updated edition
to the author's first book Beyond Leveled Books. This new
book draws on their continued research and provides a
much-needed perspective on moving transitional readers
from basic supports to independent book selection.
The text also provides support in developing an
understanding of the transitional reader and meeting their
needs.
Szymusiak, Sibberson & Koch also challenge the overuse of
levelled texts for our early readers.
Szymusiak, Sibberson & Koch (2007)

No More Independent Reading
Without Support
Miller & Moss (2013)
Miller & Moss review recent research-based techniques on
independent reading and the reading workshop. Their
concise overviews make a compelling case for bringing
independent reading back to our critical daily practice.
No More Independent Reading Without Support discusses
the critical practices required for independent reading to be
effective.
It distinguishes between silent reading, DEAR and highquality
independent reading and provides research around
these practices. It also challenges readers to implement
purposeful independent reading time for all students.

Letter Lessons and First Words:
Phonics Foundations That Work
Mesmer (2019)
The book Letter Lessons and First Words: Phonics Foundations
That Work provides a research-based vision of what engaging
differentiated, sequential and explicit phonics instruction can
look like.
Mesmer provides basic information about how the English
system of writing works which is vital knowledge if teachers are
going to be effective in their teaching.
A clear scops and sequence of what to teach, and a quick
assessment that enables teachers to place students in the
appropriate unit of instruction is included.
Videos show students working with letters, words, and books
at various stages of their learning.

Conferring with Readers: Supporting
Each Student’s Growth &
Independence
Serravallo & Goldberg (2007)
This book provides a comprehensive guide that shows teachers how
to determine what readers have learned and what they need to
practice. It then provides suggestions for targeting instruction to
meet students’ needs.
You’ll learn how to:
• research a student’s use of skills through questions and
observations, compliment to support and build upon
successes, follow up on prior instruction for accountability
and depth of understanding, explain a reading strategy by
providing an explicit purpose and context, model the strategy
to make the invisible brainwork of reading more visible,
guide a reader in practicing the strategy and link the strategy
to independent reading.

Conferring: The Keystone of
Reader’s Workshop
Allen (2009)
This book by Patrick Allen provides valuable instructional
support to all teachers. Conferring: The Keystone of Reader’s
Workshop is regarded as a benchmark text as it helps teachers
to not only think about children, reading and thinking, but also
helps them discover the strength, power and necessity of
conferring with student readers.
Allen explores the fundamentals of conferring and provides
excellent techniques and prompts that lead teachers through
the components of effective reading conferences from start to
finish.
Throughout the book, it is proven that by adopting excellent
approaches of conferring with independent readers, nonreaders
are transformed into avid readers.

Teaching Reading
Comprehension Strategies
Cameron (2009)
Teaching Reading Comprehension Strategies is a
step-by-step guide on how to introduce and teach
reading comprehension strategies and how they fit
into your literacy program.
Each strategy has its own chapter, with:
• an explanation of the strategy and how it
supports comprehension
• the language we use when using a strategy
• guided and independent student activities that
support teaching the strategy.

The Teaching Guide to Reading
Conferences: Grade K-8
Serravallo (2019)
A Teacher’s Guide to Reading Conferences is a quick, clear
and easy to read resource for teachers who want to make a
change and want to do it right away.
What’s included:
• Jen’s moves and language
• 9 videos of her teaching in K–8 classrooms
• 13 conference note-taking forms—one for each
reading goal from the hierarchy in her Reading
Strategies Book
• Suggestions for connecting emergent bilingual
learners’ language goals and reading goals.

So What Do They Really
Know?
So What Do They Really Know? includes a wealth of
information, specifically exploring the complex issue of
monitoring, assessing, and grading students' thinking
and performance with fairness and fidelity.
Tovani shows teachers how to use assessments to
monitor student growth and provides targeted feedback
that enables students to master content goals. She also
shares ways to bring students into the assessment cycle
so they can monitor their own learning, maximizing
motivation and engagement.
Tovani (2010)

Creating Lifelong Readers
Through Independent Reading
Creating Lifelong Readers Through Independent Reading
provides concrete suggestions for creating independent
reading programs that make a difference.
Practical tools and tips for creating classroom libraries,
guidelines for self-selection of texts and lesson ideas are
included.
There are links to current research and insightful interviews
with literacy leaders, Richard Allington. Linda Gambrell, Tony
Stead, Sharon Taberski and Myra Zarnowski.
Moss & Young (2010)

Comprehension Connections:
Bridges to Strategic Reading
Comprehension Connections creates a framework and a guide for
teaching comprehension strategies that can be complicated or
abstract.
The lessons aim to make abstract thinking accessible to primary
students.
The approach sequences stages of learning for each strategy that
takes students from a fun object lesson to a deeper understanding
through writing, discussion, song, art and movement.
Six core strategies that successful readers use to engage with texts
are explored. The strategies are schema, inferring, questioning,
determining importance, visualising and synthesising.
Harvey (2007)

Improving Comprehension
with Think-Aloud Strategies
Wilhelm shows how he teaches students how to recognise and
make meaning. The approach he uses is based on the gradual
release of responsibility principle. He further explains why
Think-Alouds are a sound strategy for translating this principle
into practice. Wilhelm also explores powerful reading
techniques like inferring, visualisaing, summarizing, making
connections to real life, plus many more.
Brief lessons, practical activities, classroom scenarios and
sample students work are included.
Use this book to help your students learn how to read better!
Wilhelm (2001)

Mini-Lessons for Literature
Circles
Mini-lessons for Literature Circles focuses on
supporting teachers to build respectful classroom
communities, deepen their student’s book
discussions and create lifelong readers.
There are forty-five short, focused, practical and
teacher-directed lessons that begin, guide and
follow-up every successful book club meeting.
Daniels & Steineke (2004)