Teaching Reading Virtually or In-Person

In my last couple of blog posts, I explained how I teach guided reading groups remotely, how I use synchronous and asynchronous learning in my own classroom, and how I hold a virtual (live!) reading conference.

Did you miss those blog posts? If so, you can check out the videos and blog posts below:

Synchronous and Asynchronous Learning Blog Post

Synchronous and Asynchronous Learning Video

Teaching Reading Remotely Blog Post

Teaching Reading Remotely Video

Holding a Virtual Reading Conference Blog Post

Holding a Virtual Reading Conference Video

In today’s post, I want to talk about 5 effective strategies to teach reading, whether you are teaching online OR in-person! Let’s get started!

I don’t have to tell you that this has been a crazy year! And that’s an understatement. My school district has gone back and forth between hybrid and remote learning several times already just this school year. I am currently teaching reading virtually from home but am scheduled to return back to school for hybrid learning this month. Based on COVID numbers, that may or may not happen. The one thing that this school year has brought to all teachers, besides stress, is change.

Want to watch the video of how to reading Reading Online OR In-Person? Click below!

View on YouTube: Teaching Reading Online OR In-Person

We really have to be so flexible with our planning and our instruction whether it is in front of our students in our classroom or via a computer screen. Today I want to share with you my five top strategies for online or in-person teaching. These are five things that I truly do feel will make an impact, your biggest bang for your buck, best practices, whether you are teaching live in front of your students, or you’re going to be teaching remotely. These are five solid strategies that work both in-person and remotely. So, let’s go ahead and get started! **I also have a printout available for these strategies for FREE.**

Build Relationships with Your Students Before You Teach Reading

For the first one, which I believe is the most important, which is why I listed it as number one. And that is building relationships with your students and getting to know them as readers. Building relationships and making connections is always a top priority for teachers. I would venture to say that it is more important during teaching now than ever before. Yes, it mattered “back then”, but it really matters now. This is hard to do when teaching virtually, but it is so important. Not only between you and students, but between students and their peers as well.

Take Time to Share

During morning meeting time and at the end of the day, we take ten minutes of sharing time. I have noticed that when we are doing remote instruction, we are invited, and are guests in our childrens’ homes. We see their living room, their pets, their family members, we see their life. That is something we’ve never been privy to before. I take advantage of that by using that as a way to build a relationship and make connections with my students.

One day, a student who I’ll call Henry had one dog on the couch, another on the floor, and another cat in the background. I asked him, “Hey Henry” as we were waiting for the other kids to join, “How many pets do you have?”. And you know he was more than excited to share how many pets he has at home. I discovered he had 8 pets at home. We all discussed how many pets we had the time. We were so excited to share things we had in common. Even kids who didn’t have pets were chiming in to offer their opinions. Because of this connection we just made, I was able to recommend a book to Henry.

Engage Their Interests

I also saw another one of my other students being very active. Some teachers notice during live lessons that students have a difficult time sitting still but would be doing these really sophisticated moves. I finally asked her, “Where are you learning these moves from, are you in a club or something?” Yes! “I’m in cheerleading!” This led to a conversation about cheerleading and all of her accomplishments. Now if I ask “How did your competition go?”, she lights up and it makes her so happy! It takes two seconds out of my day to make her day.

Also build relationships with the families online. I had one of my students’ moms come to the actual Zoom call, and as we were ready to break for lunch I said (we’ll call him Jacob) “Go ahead and get your mom for a minute”. Initially he thought he was in trouble! I told his mom how awesome of a job Jacob has done lately. He’s completing all of his work and striving to meet his reading goals. The child is sitting there listening to the conversation I’m having with his mom. It only took four minutes out of my day and was a great way to establish a great way to establish connections with a family, via Zoom.

Use a Workshop Model to Teach Reading

If you’ve been following my posts, that I am very, very passionate about the workshop model for teaching reading. We begin every reading lesson, whether in person or virtual with an explicitly taught mini-lesson. The whole group is there and then we move into independent learning time. Then we have a closing where we come back together to review. I will say that one benefit of remote learning is that students are working independently during independent work time. Regardless of in the class or online, students are applying the skill that is taught during the mini-lesson to their own learning.

Encourage Your Readers to Read Every Day

Oh, my goodness, teaching reading is so important every day! This isn’t going to change, whether we are in person or online, we want our students reading. One problem is that my students didn’t have access to many books, and they kept re-reading the same ones. They were older and were not options that students would read if they had the choice. So, unfortunately, they do not have access. I had to find a way to get Ebooks to them. How can they still be reading independently on their device?

Epic is my number one, go-to, to get books to students. I can literally recommend books to students using Epic. Libby is another website to check out! I share the digital reading passages that I create with my students via Google Classroom and they can do that during independent learning time or reading time. You can also print out hard copies of the reading passages and then have your school mail them to families. If this isn’t an option, have families pick up a packet during designated pick-up days. Does this take time? Yes, absolutely! But if that’s what you’re familiar with teaching with then use it if it works for you.

Find Ways to Make Reading Fun and Engage your Readers

Ok, so this may be a bit challenging, especially if you are teaching reading remotely! However, I do have some ideas for you! After finishing the Mercy Watson series, we celebrated by eating toast with “a great deal of butter” on it! What book series did you just finish? How can you celebrate the conclusion of a series in an engaging way?

What about if you had guest readers come a read to your class? Can you imagine how excited students would be to see a community worker, a fellow staff member, or a family member show up on their Zoom call or in-person to read a story? At my school, we even had a therapy dog come to read once a month with students!

Integrate Reading with Writing

It’s like I explain to my students- reading and writing together like peanut butter and jelly. Reading helps you become a better writer and writing helps you become a better reading- you just can’t separate the two because they go together like glitter and glue. :)

I am currently in the middle of my non-fiction unit for reading workshop. I am teaching about the different text features for my reading mini-lessons. At the same time, my students are also crafting and writing their own nonfiction books. If I am teaching about diagrams, its purpose, and showing examples of diagrams in NF books, then my students are adding diagrams to their own NF books!

We also read every day and ensure we respond to our reading as well. My students use reader’s notebooks as a way to respond to what they are reading on a daily basis.