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If you’ve been around awhile, you know I LOVE First Chapter Friday. It is a staple in my classroom and something my students look forward to. On the rare occasion I forget to do it, they remind me immediately. It is a favorite for all.

What is First Chapter Friday?

Every Friday I select a new book and read the first chapter aloud to my class. That is it. I read the back of the book and the first chapter. Most of the time they groan and beg for more.

How Do I Choose Books?

Typically, I start with favorites of mine that are just good books and I have had success with in the past. Then I look at new and upcoming releases. I get student recommendations. This is always a favorite because there is usually automatic buy-in. And I of course share ideas with my teacher friends for ideas that have worked for them

What do kids do during it?

You can have your students just sit and listen. I give my students a recording sheet. They write the title, a 1-2 sentence summary of the book and then make a note if they are interested in reading it.

How do you keep track of First Chapter Friday choices?

I personally keep a virtually book shelf and post it in Google Classroom. This way my students can access it whenever they want all year. Some teachers hang pictures of book covers around their room or on a bulletin board. I also leave the titles from the month on my front board so they are accessible.

Which books should I start with?

Okay, I had trouble choosing. There are so many good ones. I will leave fifteen choices for you.

This is just a starting place. A good beginning. Any book will work, but I recommend skimming the first chapter. In some cases the chapter might be too long to sustain attention so you could stop it midway.

If you are looking for more information about starting First Chapter Friday, I have you covered! My resource includes a list of book suggestions, three different organizer options in paper or digital, as well as monthly trackers.

What is your favorite First Chapter Friday book? I’d love to hear!

I have found over the years that reading accountability is so important. Over the next month I am going to share ways that I keep students accountable AND engaged.

What is it?

Status of the class is a quick and easy way to track and monitor students progress with reading.

Why use it?

It is a simple and efficient strategy for teachers to hold students accountable. It takes away the need for students to waste time with reading logs, but still tells students teachers are watching and want to know their progress. It helps teachers figure out what students are faking or passively reading. Students can set reading goals and use this to help track it.

How do you do it?

Status of the class can be conducted orally, on paper or digitally. I had tried doing it orally and keeping a checklist, but it didn’t work for me. The last couple of years I have given my students a Google Form once a week. This has become part of the classroom routine. I do it as part of my Friday Do-Now.

What do you include on your status of the class?

I ask students to tell me book title, page number, pick an emoji about their thoughts of the book and then let me know if they need help finding a new book.

Look no further

If you are looking for a digital Google Form to use for status of the class look no further. I have a full editable Google Form available on my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

Status of the class has allowed me to keep track of my students reading progress, set goals, and find out who has been lying to me about reading. It has been a game changer for me!

It is that time of the year. State testing is looming. As teachers, we start to think about: what have we taught this year? What do we still need to teach? What do we need to circle back to?

While I am not fan of state tests, they aren’t going away anytime soon. I do find it important to prepare my students so that they are not overwhelmed. I hope that by preparing them, they are less anxious.

I brainstormed a list of my must-teach ELA skills. It was hard to narrow it down to just six, but I tried.

Main Idea

Students must be able to identify the most important point of a text. There will be questions that ask them to do this. Also, if students are not able to explain what the text is about, the more difficult skills become even harder.

Inferencing

Students need to think beyond the text and use their background knowledge coupled with the text to answer the questions. The answer to an inference will not be explicitly stated in a text. This is a very difficult skill for students. Inferencing is also one that students use for a variety of other skills as well.

Text Structure

I don’t know about your state, but there is ALWAYS a compare and contrast question for my students. This requires them to read two passages and identify the similarities and differences. This can be difficult, but it is important. I try to start small with topics that interest them, then move into shorter texts before doing full passages. Students must also have an understanding of the other text structures as well for state tests: problem and solution, cause and effect, sequencing and description. I find that every year, there are questions about these structures in some form or another.

Evidence

 I always stress to my students that if they can support their thinking with evidence their answer is correct. Students MUST be able to go back into a text and select the BEST piece of evidence. This takes a lot of practice.

Theme

This year, my students are having a harder time with theme than in previous years. This is another skill where inferencing plays a role. Themes are not usually stated in the text; they have to be inferred. Some students also confuse the theme and main idea. I try to stress that a theme can be applied to several books, movies, poems while a main idea is specific to just one book. When students struggle with theme, I have them use the sentence starter “The author is trying to teach me…” to begin. We eventually cross it out, but it helps them frame their thinking.

Context Clues

One of the most common types of questions I see is context clue questions. I find that my students want to just select a meaning, but don’t try to actually figure out the unknown word. I really try to hammer home the different types of context clues: inference, synonym, antoynm, definition and example. By making them identify what type of clue is given in the text, it makes them take the time needed to come up with the meaning of the unknown word.

My list could keep going. There are so many important skills, but when I narrowed it down to six this is what I got. 

Would you take any off? Add any?