Tuesday’s Tip

Hi Everyone! It’s a lovely, sunny Tuesday here in the Pacific Northwest!  Our hearts go out to all of you who are freezing in snow and ice!  We’ve been so very lucky this winter and have had beautiful weather. Maybe you should all just move here??  We would LOVE that!!

Today’s tip has to do with motivating readers. It comes after two recent conversations with teachers who said, “We can’t do fun stuff.  There’s no time!” and “We have so much pressure to get our struggling students up and now I see them not loving reading anymore!”   Sad, no?  It made my heart just drop to hear these things.  Sadly, I know this happens all over the country these days.  Well, with Dr. Seuss day coming on Monday, I’d like to encourage you to do some….watch out I’m going to say an F word…….FUN stuff to get your kiddos loving reading again!  It’s the perfect day to do it, too!  So go ahead…have some FUN for goodness sake!  Dr. Seuss books are the perfect books to instill a love of reading! Go for it!!!

And here’s a fun way to motivate students to read a new book.  The kiddos LOVE this!  Take a book that you will read with them (or with the small group) in a few days.  Cover the front cover with sticky notes and the back cover with some paper so the kiddos can’t see what the book is.  Then, each day, with flare and drama and a big “ta da!”  remove one sticky note showing just a little bit of the cover.  Take a few moments to have the kids predict what the book is going to be about. Continue with this for a few days until you are ready to read it!  It’s a guaranteed way to motivate the kiddos to read that book (and work on inferencing and predicting at the same time)!   It would be great to do this with a few Dr. Seuss books to see if the sweeties can guess which Dr. Seuss book it is!  FUN (yep…I said the F word again), and motivating!  So go out there and have some FUN!!!!
          

Have a great week and a great Dr. Seuss day next week!
HAPPY, FUN, Reading!
Kristin

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