Okay. Hi, guys. Happy Wednesday. Um I feel like sometimes I have to like take a minute to remind myself what day it is. So, um but it is Wednesday. We are in week three of our Stellar Teacher Summer series and there's usually a little bit of a lag. I think it's about 30 seconds from the time I go live to when y'all actually start seeing and hearing me um and so if you're watching me live, if you could um just let me know in the comments. Hi, I'm here. I can hear you. I always want to make sure that my sound works. Um I once did a face live and got maybe about 25 minutes not 25 minutes. maybe like 15 minutes into it before I realized that like my sound wasn't working. Um clearly, I wasn't paying attention to the comments at that point and then if you end up watching the replay, if you just want to type in replay to let me know that you caught it, that's always helpful for me just to know who's able to see it. Um I have a couple of things that I want to remind you of. Um first of all, if you are watching tonight, thank you so much for joining. We are streaming to both our upper Elementary Teachers Facebook group well as my Facebook page and if you have not already joined us inside our Facebook group, I would love to have you come and join us um and I wanted to show you something real quick. I'm going to share my screen. Um we are doing weekly Facebook Lives on Wednesday and quite a few teachers have been asking where the replays are where they can find them. So, if you're in our Facebook group, we love having all of our members. It's just so much fun. It's been such a great community. Like I said, if you're not in it, ask us for the link. We'll send it Um but if you are looking for the past replays of our Facebook lives, if you come to where it says topics, you'll notice that there is a STC. That's the Stellar Teacher Company workshop Wednesday and then if you click on that, you will see all of the past lives. So, if you happen to miss a training, um if you want to go back and catch something, all of the Facebook lives that I do will be available inside that group and you can always come back and um catch this. So, I just wanted to share that with you real quick. So, um I hope you guys are all having a really great Wednesday. We're going to be talking all about independent Reading today and I am super excited and before we get in, I kind of thought it might be fun for us to talk a little bit about our own independent reading and so if you would, let me know in the comments what is the most recent book that you can remember reading and enjoying whether it is a picture book, a professional development book, uh an article a novel, a cookbook, whatever it is, just share in the comments a book that you most recently read that you enjoyed reading and for me, one of the most recent books I read was Before She Knew Him by Peter Swanson and it is a thriller. Um a little bit of a mystery. It was such a good book. I literally read it in one entire day and I have been on a bit of a reading kick this year. This is book number. I think this is book number fourteen for me. um and part of it is is the more I read, the more I want to read and the more I read, the more I discover titles and authors and the more I am talking with other people about what they're reading and I'm asking questions and it just begins, it just becomes this like part of my life and I think the same is true for our students. If we want our students to be reading books and having conversations about books, they need to actually read. I think last year in 2020, I maybe read like two books the entire year and just sort of being out of that reading habit. um made it difficult for me to get in, you know, and want to read because it just wasn't something that I was doing on a regular basis and so, independent reading is not only important for us as adults but it's important for our students and if we want them to develop these reading Habits where they're reading, you know, AA, book a week or a book a month, then, they need to have practice doing that in school. So, I'm loving some of these suggestions actually shared. We begin at the end. Um Vonda shared the Lottery Rose by Irene Hunt. I have not heard of that one before. Women before Wallace, um the return by Nicholas Sparks. Just finished it yesterday. Um city of girls who almost finished reading the stolen marriage. Okay, I love these suggestions. So, thank you for sharing. I um I'm actually looking for a new book to read. Um so, I love that you guys shared this also just so you guys know. Um if you are watching this in the upper Elementary reading teacher's book. Um I just the way I use this program called Streamyard um to go live so I can share my screen and for whatever reason, when I'm streaming to a group, I cannot see your name. So, I see Facebook users. So, you leave a comment and I don't say your name. I would if I could but it is just not visible to me. So, I just wanted to let you know but um I love when you guys comment. I love when you ask questions. So, if I'm sharing something and it really resonates with you, give us a thumbs up, Heart of the post. Um let me know in the comments if that made sense to you. If you have questions about something, ask a question. I will make sure to come back whether I get to it on the live or at the end, I'll come back and answer all the questions both on our Facebook page and in the group. um and it's just it's so much fun for me when you guys engage. So, feel free to leave all the comments, um ask questions, and we're going to be talking all about independent Reading today. Today, we're going to be talking about why it's important. We're going to be talking about um how to get started with it. Some of the habits that we can have our students do. Um just some general tips to keep students engaged but before we do that, I have a quote that I want to share with you and this is a Kate the Camilo quote. He's one of my favorite authors. Um and it says reading should not be presented to children as a chore or a duty but it should be offered to them as a precious gift. Let me know how you feel about this quote in the comments if you agree, if this is something that you try to live by with your teaching, if you think that this is hard to embrace in school because of some of the pressures that we have um but this this quote really is how I try to approach Independent Reading in my classroom and if you got my Email this week talking about this Facebook Live, I told you that my students fell in love with independent Reading and that is 100% True and um some cases I feel maybe a little, I don't want to say deceptive or sneaky but you guys know how. it's like if you um if you sort of like teach your students or present things to them in a certain way, they're going to, you know, they're going to respond. They're going to sort of like, you know, ham it up if that's what you're asking them to do and when I moved up to fourth grade, um I used to be a lower elementary teacher and in the lower grade students love reading just because it's new for them. Um they're discovering it for the first time but when I moved up to fourth grade, I realized my students did not have the same love of reading as my lower elementary kids and I was like, I have to do something about this because if I want them to become readers, they need to be reading and so they need to be excited about reading. Um so, I think it's probably my second year of teaching in fourth grade and when I introduced Independent Reading to my students, we did it on the very first day of school. It was one of the first things that I introduced to them and I made this big deal about it and I talked to them how I was like, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to show you guys your you about our my favorite part of the day and you guys are so lucky because every day you're going to get to sit down and read independently and we this is just going to be so much fun and as readers, we get to explore books and we get to have fun and I just made it this huge big thing and I talked about how we're so lucky and it's my favorite time of the day and then every time it was independent reading I literally would say, okay, you guys, I'm so excited. I've been waiting for this all day. It is time for independent reading and I just got excited every time we talk about it and my students literally would cheer, they would say yes. Yay. I can't wait. I've been waiting for it and I think in some cases, I had students that were genuinely excited about it but I think a lot of them responded that way to independent Reading because I presented it to them in a way that was exciting and they mirrored the way I talked about it and after a while, you know, when we kind of get through those first couple weeks of independent reading and um you know, the honeymoon phase of school is over and you start to have some annoyances and and I think it was probably like my first bad day of school and was just frustrated. We didn't have time. Things weren't going well. You know, maybe kids were starting to talk or whatever and I said, okay, said, okay, it's time for independent reading and I had no enthusiasm and my students all just automatically like, yay and then they sort of thought, wait a minute, are you not excited about this anymore? It's like you said, this was your favorite time of day. Where's your excitement and enthusiasm and just their response reminded me that I should be excited about it every day because I want them to be excited about it. So, as you think about independent reading I want to think about how are you presenting Independent to your students? Are you presenting it to them? Is this is a chore? This is homework. This is a um this is something that you have to do. It's an obligation or are you introducing it to them and presenting it to them in such a way that makes them excited? That makes them enthusiastic. That makes them believe that they can be confident. So, today, we're going to talk about um first of all, just kind of we independent reading is important. I'm going to talk a lot about how to build those solid independent Reading with your students at the start of the year, I'm going to talk about how to keep your students engaged in independent reading and some things that we can do that keep them excited and motivated um and then just some general accountability ideas and then I have a couple of questions that people ask that I want to answer at the end. So, like I said, feel free to ask. Um so many questions. I'm going to go ahead and put that quote off to the side just because it's easier for me if I have the whole string. Also, my puppies are with me tonight. So, um if you have any pets that are watching with you, they can they can I don't know enjoy my dogs. Hopefully they don't get way too much. Um but one of the things that I think it's important for us first of all is to remind ourselves why do we want to have our students Reading independently in the first place and ultimately, if we want our students to become readers, they need practice reading and somebody had asked me a question, what is the best thing to have students do while you're working in small groups? and my answer is going to be read independently because if they read independently, they're going to get practice applying the skills and strategies that you teach in small group, They're going to get practice applying the skills and strategies during the mini lessons, they're going to be able to build their stamina. They're going to be able to identify their independent reading preferences and they're just going to learn how to navigate the world of books if we want them to read, they have to practice reading. It's kind of like, you know, any sort of sport if we want students to get better at playing tennis or basketball. if we only ever talk about tennis and we show them videos of tennis and we show them diagrams of tennis and We show them how we play tennis but we never actually let them take a racket and a ball and hit it back and forth and play a game. They're never going to get good at it and it's the same with reading. Our students have to have practice time and text if we want them to become better readers. Um so, just an important thing to um read. Um great question Ashley, how does this work with your weaker readers and I'm going to talk about that here in a little bit with some things to get started and so if you need me to clarify a little bit more towards the end just let me know and I'll happily expand upon that and then the other thing just remember with reading why it is so important. Last week, during our mini lesson session, I talked about how mastery happens when students practice mastery does not happen during a whole group. It does not happen during small group. It happens during that independent practice time and so we want to make sure that our students have a chance to actually practice again, independent Reading and then maybe the most important thing is when students read independently, they really get to discover their independent reading preferences. I remember I not a reader Growing up. I didn't enjoy reading. I didn't choose to read. We had to. My mom made us. We went to the library and we had to but I just remember picking books and I was probably one of those fake readers. What I would flip through books and then when I was in sixth grade, I remember my sixth grade teacher read to us pretty much every single doll book and all of those books are like fantasy books and I remember I fell in love with it. I love those books and then all of a sudden, I realized that there's this whole genre of fantasy books that I can read and enjoy and that's what got me on reading and so I think it's just a reminder that our students unless they get time to practice reading and exploring genres, they're never going to figure out their preferences and if they never figure out their preferences, then, they're not actually going to become readers and so they need to have time to actually practice reading. Um okay, so we're going to talk a little bit about how to actually get started with independent Reading but one of the things I would love to hear from you in the comments and I apologize for my dogs in the background. Um would love to know in an ideal world. How many minutes would you love to let your students read independently? So, if it is 10 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day, 20 minutes a day, 45 minutes a day, let me know in the comments how many minutes you'd love to have your students independently reading and for me, I made it my goal in fourth grade to get my students to forty to 45 minutes. Now, remember, that was my goal. We didn't always hit that every single day. Um some days with our schedule and transitions and other things we only got down Maybe fifteen. Some days only twenty and but I always try to get my students to 40 minutes. Now, we also didn't get there during the first 3 weeks of school. It took us a month, sometimes a month and a half to get to that point and honestly, I had some groups, some here that we never got to 40 minutes and we had to stop around thirty and I realized that's just what worked for them. So just know that whatever your goal is, whatever you're trying to get your students to achieve, it's totally fine and any minute really whether it is 15 minutes or 10 minutes is better than no minutes at all. So, we have some that are thirty to forty 3030. Um yes, 30 minute. I love that 30 minutes is awesome and again, think about it like if you gave your students that gift of reading 30 minutes every single day, think about the books they could explore. Think about the genres, think about the confidence that they could have. So, I love that you guys are shooting really high just as far as like the goals um for your students. So, a couple things to think about when we are thinking about independent Reading in upper elementary and here's the sad thing by the time students come to us a lot of times in third, fourth, and fifth grade, they've already created this this sort of identity they have about themselves. They've already kind of either told themselves, I'm not a good reader or maybe they told themselves they they are a reader but a lot of times our students come to us and they know they struggle. They know that they don't do well on state tests. They know that they can't read and access the texts that they have been given to them. They don't like reading and so we have a lot of challenges that we have to overcome If We want our students to read independently. enjoy it, and actually have it be beneficial. So, we're going to have to go ahead and kind of talk about those things. So, the first thing that I want you to think about is it's not all going to happen right away and just like how we have until the end of the year for our students to master the standards we have until the end of the year to get our students to become independent readers. So, don't try to rush the process. Don't try to get it to the point where you know, by the end of the week, we're going to know all the things we need to and by the end of the first 3 weeks, we've built up our stamina. Just know that it is a process and for some students, it might happen quickly and other students, it might not. Um one of the things that I try to do is during and I mentioned this last week, I will try to dedicate the first 3 weeks of my school year to what I call launching Reading workshop and for the first 3 weeks, we don't talk about content. We don't talk about, you know, um any of the standards we talk simply about reading Habits. We talk about our behaviors and we talk about Routines and we try to really focus on building this community that is centered around Reading and so, I usually spend one entire week during those first 3 weeks talking about independent Reading and my objectives vary from year to year and a lot of it depends on the students that I have and this is where it's important to have sort of this idea of responsive teaching. We want to make sure that we are responding to our students needs. Sometimes, you might have to teach your students the difference between fake reading and re-reading and sometimes your students might come to you already have that Sandy depending on, you know, who their teacher was the previous year or you know, how your student or how your school uses Reading workshops. So, just know that like every year, your your instruction and your introduction to reading workshop or independent Reading might look differently but some of the objectives that you might want to consider teaching during that first week or that week or two is talking about building stamina um and the way I did it in my class is we would start off um the first day. Honestly, I would let my students read independently and it would be no In 10 minutes, I would tell my students that you know, we're going to try to read for 10 minutes um and then usually, I would go five to 6 minutes and I would cut them off because if we can get five to 6 minutes, uh one, first of all, uh you always want to when you're building your stamina, you want to stop your students before they get to the point where they are fatigued or getting distracted. So, you really want to sort of be able to watch and observe and when do you notice that your students are sort of going to drop off and so a lot of times if you're on that five or 6 minutes I would just stop and I would say, oh my goodness, I know I said we're going to keep reading but I was just so impressed and amazed. You guys did such a good job. I noticed and then I would point out a couple habits and behaviors. I know so and so, you know, was you know, quiet. they had their, you know, in the book, I could tell by their facial expressions they read the whole time, whatever it is and then that's it and then we would be done for the day but then my students would say, well, what about the rest of the 10 minutes? And I said, well, we don't have time. We'll come back to that tomorrow or you know, we've got something else we need to talk about. I have a story I want to share with you and that kind of left them hanging I would try to create the sense of. wait a minute, I want more time to read um versus cutting them off, you know, like letting them go and then stopping what we've noticed a problem. So, it is okay if as you're building that stamina, you only give your students five to 6 minutes and you could do that for the first week or so because then they're building that salmon very slowly but we would slowly build our stamina. I would add 30 seconds to a minute every single day and we would set sort of milestones. We would set goals and so we would maybe say, okay, once we get to 10 minutes, then we'll have a, you know, a reading party and it could be something as simple as they get to have free read. They get to bring in a stuffed animal. We get to have a little snack during reading and then maybe once we got to 20 minutes, we would do another little reading celebration um but build your stamina incredibly slowly. Take your time. There's no point in rushing it and one of the things that is really helpful is if you can, you know, sort of anticipate when your students are going to get to that breaking point or that fatigue point and then stop your reading that. So, I would love to know kind of on your first day of school, if you let your students read independently and for how many minutes, where do you start? Um and it might be helpful to know what grade level as well. So, in the comments, if you want to let us know what grade you teach and when you start introducing Independent Reading, how many minutes do you give your students that will be helpful as we have some teachers who are watching that have never done independent reading before and they can kind of figure out what grade level or where to start their students? you know, depending on the grade level that they're at. So, Stamina is usually one of the first things that my students. I'd like to explain to them them what stamina is and why we're going to slowly build it over time. You can also do things like Let students. Um you can have a graph for individuals. You can have a graph like a class um but again, make it a thing. Celebrate it. We want to just constantly have um you know, this positive sort of like mindset around reading and reading for longer periods of time. So, other lessons that I would teach during um other lessons that I would teach during that first like week So, we'll be teaching students the difference between real and fake Reading. You know, the reading where they just flip the pages and they're quiet but they're not actually reading and then the difference between real Reading where we can tell and I always tell my students that I can tell by their facial expressions. I can tell if they are really reading because they're going to either be smiling or they're going to have big eyes or they might even like, you know, put their hands up by their mouth because they've read something surprising. So, showing students that you really know if they're reading or not. Um let's see fourth usually start 8 minutes. I think that's a really good one. We need to start with 8 minutes. Renee says um fourth grade and starts um the first week of school, fourth grade 10 minutes. So, yeah, it's okay to start independent Reading with a very short amount of time. Um other lessons you might want to incorporate are how to select books. Um I love teaching students strategies to select books. If you organize your library by genre, introduce them and explain to them how your library is set up so they know how to find them but even teaching them to read the back of the book them to read the inside of the book cover. Teaching them to ask classmates what books that they have recommended, teaching them to, you know, ask other people in the school, asking their parents getting book recommendations, you know, looking for recommended reading, um you know, teaching them even how to use the scholastic book order to make a list of books that they want to read in the future. Um teaching students how to abandon books. We have to make sure students have the sort of autonomy to choose to read a book or put a book down if it's not something that is peaking up I'll take that. Thank you. My husband's usually home at this time. so I apologize about the dogs. Um teaching students that we can set a purpose for their reading that you know, that sometimes we read for academic purposes and sometimes we read for fun purposes and helping them realize that different different um different times we sit down to read are going to have a different purpose. Other things that I love to teach my students especially early on is that readers strong readers will read both in and out of school. That can be a great lesson to teach early on in the year as you introduce Reading homework and making sure your students realize that we want them to be reading outside of school. In addition to at school, um teaching students that are readers will explore a variety of genres and that we want our students to explore Reading, You know, if they've only read fiction books or if they've never read a fairy tale or if they've never read a biography that they want to explore a book and just because they pick it up and they read it doesn't mean that they have to love it. It doesn't have to be their favorite but they want to be exploring books So that can be a mini lesson that you do. Um teaching students that readers will keep a list of books that they want to read. So, all of these things are and behaviors that we want our students to embody and embrace and so we have to teach them all of these things. So, really think about, you know, what do you want your students to be when it comes to independent Reading at the end of the year and you can even sit down and make a list of the attributes. I want my students to know genres. I want my students to have confidence in their reading ability. I want my students to be able to have a list of books that they want to read. I want my students to be able to read for 40 minutes. I want my students to read in and out of school and whatever attributes are on this list make plans to teach those as a mini lesson at some point during the year. That's a great place to figure out sort of how to teach um how to teach your students to become independent readers. So, all of those lessons and then of course, start small and then slowly build up your stamina, other things and I'm curious because I know that sometimes in upper elementary, not only do our students have this idea but I I know sometimes teachers, this is a misconception that I had as well when I moved up to fourth grade is that my students need to be reading chapter books. So, I'm Do your students read mostly picture books for independent reading? or do they read mostly chapter books? And I'd love for you to let me know in the comments if you're, if your independent reading is usually picture books or chapter books and um one of the things when I got my masters in curriculum and instruction, I had a professor that talked all about the importance of or yeah, the importance of our upper elementary students Reading picture books. I love that Michelle said both. I'm so glad to hear that. That's excellent and one of the things is if You are. Okay. Both good. You guys are on the right track here. If your students typically mostly use chapter books or even if they gravitate towards chapter books, you want to push them in the direction of picture books and a couple things that I like to do. So, during the first couple weeks of school, I will not have my classroom library open yet and even though we're reading independently, I haven't introduced them to the library. I haven't shown them um you know, how the library is organized that fits later but what I'll do is I put a bin on each of my tables or my groups of picture books and that's what they use for independent reading and so many of my students are, hold on one second guys. I'm so sorry. Thank you. Okay. There you go. Come on. This is usually like the witching hours with my dogs where they are so excited um to play. So, if you have pets, maybe yours have the same sort of energy at the end of the day um but they can go play out in the living room. So, one of the things that I would do is I would put a bin of picture books on their in their um on their tables and I would rotate the band between the groups and so every day during independent reading and we're just you know, 1012 minutes here to start. they would have picture books to read and so many of my students were excited to read chapter books You know, the older they get, the more chapter books they want to read but I told them that we're just focusing on picture books and I do picture books for a couple of reasons. First of all, if you have lower level students who struggle with reading, they are much more likely to be successful if they are able to read a picture book because they have the support of the pictures, Picture books are shorter so they can actually get through an entire book and a lot of times they will be able to reread books that you've read to them as a class. So, using picture books is a great way to boost the of your lower level students and at the start of the year, I love the sort of requiring all of my students to read picture books because that kind of levels the playing field. I know sometimes our reluctant readers feel like like if they're the only ones who aren't reading chapter books, they feel like it's an obvious sign that they are a struggling reader um and so I love just requiring all students to do. Actually, I'm so glad that your dog does the same thing. Thanks for making me feel a little better but I love sort of making all of my students read picture books at the start of and then it reminds them how fun it is to read a picture book and how great it is and I encourage my students to read picture books throughout the entire year because it's a great way for you to be even be able to assess and see if a student can apply the skills that you're teaching them. It'll be easier for you to determine if a student can apply those skills in a picture book than if it is a, you know, a long chapter book. Um so, you know, because at the start of the year, everybody's reading chapter books. I then tell my students, you know, anytime you go to library. Get a chapter book, and get a picture book and then it just makes it like I said a little bit more even as far as our students, our students who are struggling readers, they don't feel like it's obvious that maybe they're the students that don't know how to read as well if they're getting picture books because everybody's Reading picture books. So, if you have not used picture books as part of your independent reading, I would encourage you to make that part of your routine at the start of the year when you're introducing picture books and then just constantly encouraged to read, constantly encourage your students to picture books all throughout the year as well and then other things that you want to keep in mind is giving students ownership and control of their independent reading and um I think it might have been Diana ask about how much choice do we give students during independent reading and so I've mentioned this before but the more choice we give our students. So, anytime we give our students choice, we're going to see an increase in engagement and when we see an increase in engagement, there's an increase in motivation and comprehension. so the more choice you can give them is the better but I also realized that can sometimes be scary for teachers for us to give and so, if you have never given your students choice, maybe make it your goal that at some point, whether it's this year or next year, you want to create a reading block where your students every day can choose books and you know that they'll be engaged and that they can read the entire time but if you're not there yet, that is completely okay. Maybe you start by saying, okay, on Fridays, Fridays are the days that my students get to choose whatever it is they want to read. I'm going to give a little more controlled choice during the week but Fridays, they get to choose or maybe it's 2 days a week or maybe you give your students half of the independent reading time to choose to read whatever they want and then the other half, you assign it. So, when it comes to choice, again, I think I love to think about not only this for our students but as us as teachers on our teacher journey as well. We are all on a continuum and we are all continuing to grow and learn and so if you are new to independent Reading, if you're new to giving your students choice, if you're new to using picture books in your library and you know, Students choose how to respond to reading and all of these things. That is okay. You don't have to get to the end result yet. You can start by just incorporating a few of these things. So, if this is all new to you, set a small goal and you know, maybe just start with a few minutes of independent reading or a few minutes of free choice or 1 day of free choice and then just commit to constantly growing and improving upon that. Um so, choice is always going to be a good thing. The more choice you can give your students the better but also if if this is new and you've never given your students choice before, then, you don't have to give you know, free reign from the beginning and also reminding yourself that anytime you give your students choice, you are going to be teaching them. You're going to be modeling to them. You're going to be showing them. So, it's not like on the very first day of school. it's like, okay, 40, minutes of independent Reading, pick whatever book you want and go for it. You're building them up to that. you're training them. you're showing them how to make good choices. You're teaching them how to develop their reading identities. You're teaching them how to respond. All of that happens over time to work slowly by the end of the year, they might get to that choice. So, hopefully that answers the question about We can talk a little bit more. a little bit more about that at the end too. If you guys want to hear um just some other strategies on how to sort of like build that independence with your students but one of the things that I like to do in independent Reading can be this time where because here's the reality of it, I'm not going to be sort of delusional or pretend that you know, all of my students were angels all of the time. I had moments where I got so frustrated with my students because they were either talking during independent reading. They were out of their desks during independent reading. the reading uh their book boxes. were you know, a mess. They were uh they're reading journals were disorganized. They were writing in their science journals. So, my classroom was definitely not perfect when it came to independent Reading. Um I definitely learned things over the years and one of the things that I realized is that pointing out the negatives and you know, pausing Independent Reading and yelling at a student or correcting a student that made a mistake is not going to be as effective as if we highlight the positive So, one of the things that I learned to do was rather than telling a student, you're off task, you need to get back on track. You need to be reading whatever it is. I would point out the student that had the behaviors that I wanted, all of my students to have. You know, I would point out that so and so, I was reading a variety of genres so and so, it's on tasks the whole time. I could tell so and so was engaged in the book the entire time. I noticed that someone balanced the time well, between reading and writing. So, I would highlight the things that I wanted all of my students to do rather than pointing out the negative because that just reinforce those behaviors for all of the students. Um so, just something that works for me. So, a couple of things that I want to share with you. I have a ton of resources that I use with my students to keep them engaged and motivated during independent reading time and some of these are freebies that I have. Some of them are resources in my TPT store. Some of them are resources that are in the membership um and so if as I am sharing these things, if you want to know where you can find it, just leave a comment and um Brooke or myself will come back and include the link either at the end. Um if it's a freebie or like I said, if there's a link to it in my TPT store, wherever you can find it, we will let you know. So, just know that I'm going to share quite a few different ideas and as I'm sharing them, if it's something that you want to know, how you can get access to, just let us know in the comments and then we'll share the link. So, I think one of the things that we have to remind ourselves is that if we want our students to actually read independently and if we want them to um enjoy it and read the whole time and be engaged with it. it has to be fun for them. I think we have this constant struggle between making reading fun and making it effective and it can be Reading can be fun and it can be effective but we have to be mindful of it. We have to remind ourselves that our students need to be excited. They need to be engaged. They need to be motivated. They need to, you know, be excited about what we're putting in front of them. So, I would give my students a wide variety of sort of accountability, tools of response things and I would constantly switch it up because I know that I have a short attention span and I'm an adult and a nine or 10 year old even if something they enjoyed something 1 week in a couple of weeks. It's going to do the same trick. So, just know that how you start the year with engagement might not be how you end the year and you might have to constantly introduce new ideas or strategies to keep your students motivated and engaged. So, um what do you grade for reading workshop? Great question, Mandy and so what do I do for reading workshop as far as grades? Um a couple things I'm going to answer this real quick and then I'll share some of the resources. So, one um I did this and a lot of it would depend year to year what my school, the braiding standards were um I would grade like a reading response assignment. So, if it was a graphic organizer, um if we did like a reading log, um if we had a like um I have some reading response activities. They're not necessarily graphic organizers but if they had to like create like a social media profile for a character, if they had to come up with like a to do list that the character would do if they had to create a story about um if they had to write an alternative ending something like that might be um something that I would do for me or for a grade. Um sometimes I would just do participation grades and whether or not they were on task and I had a rubric for independent reading, you know, read the whole time, read a variety of genres, responded to reading, Um that would be that would be part of their grades. So, participation grade. So, a lot of it depends on what your school standards are. One of the things that I try to do is I tried not to grade everything for independent reading and I tried not to braid every single day or make them have an assignment every single day because again, I always think about it every time I sat down to read a book, if I had to write a summary after every I read I would not have read fourteen books so far this year and if I had to keep a book log of every book I read, I would not do it and so I think about as an adult, what are things that sort of killed my love of reading and I try to avoid those things with my students and so I try to come up with some alternative things. So, all all of these like resources that I'm going to share with you, you could use in some capacity for grading. I would try to as much as possible rather than grading daily assignments. I would would do something like on Friday, I'm going to give you an exit ticket to assess your character analysis because that's what we've been practicing this week and let your students know that it is a assessment and it can be a short little exit ticket. It doesn't need to be a long quiz um but that way they know that this is not necessarily their normal reading routine um and that it's something a little bit different because when students know that something is for grade, sometimes that can cause whether it's like testing anxiety or nervousness um but if they know that everything else is for fun and it is to help them understand the reading and it is meant to be enjoyable, then they're actually going to put that enjoyment So, hopefully that answers that question. So, one of the and this is actually a free resource that I have but one of the things that I give students and these are super simple. This is just a really easy way to help students kind of set their intention for the day. We talk about a purpose for reading but these are just little, I call them accountability bookmarks and I have one for genre and I have one for reading skills and I wouldn't give them both to my students at the same time. Maybe we would do reading skills first or maybe genre and then a couple weeks later, I'd give them the reading skills and what they could do with this. They all Little close pin. If they lost their clothes pin, they had a paper clip um because these things, well, they're relatively cheap but as you can imagine, students would lose these things quite regularly or they like to play with them. So, if they lost it too bad but all it is is they would for the day. they would tell me today, I'm reading a biography and they would simply clip the paper, the clothes pin there and then this would sit on their desk during independent reading time and that was helpful for me because if I was coming around to do a reading conference, I knew that they were begin to biography and I could have questions and I could ask them questions about a biography. Um the other one is reading skills and strategies. So, asking and answering questions, close Reading com compare and contrast and so students can simply say, okay, today, I'm going to practice summarizing and they just put the clothes pin there and then again, that shows me this is what they're working on and it's just helping them set the intention. It's reminding them first of all, on this little bookmark, they see all of the skills that they should be doing as reading. So, it reminds them of what they should do and then just that simple act of saying This is what I'm working on today is a reminder that I should set a purpose for what I'm reading. So, this is a really easy thing that you can give students. It's an easy way to sort of introduce goal setting to set a purpose for reading. You could use this for a couple of weeks and you could send them home and you could introduce something else. So, this is a freebie If this is uh if you want the link for this, just let me know in the comments but this is a freebie that I shared with my audience in the past. In fact, you might already have this one um but these are super helpful to use during independent reading time. Another one of my this is also a freebie um and This is one of my favorite things that I have created but this is a genre I call it. Um it's like choose your own adventure. It's an inventory but I use this at the beginning of the year to help students figure out what books they want to read and they all start at the beginning and you know, it says, do you enjoy reading books with pictures or mostly texts and depending on their answers, they go to a different place in the flow chart and then it, you know, do you prefer picture books or chapter books? Would you rather be entertained or learn something new? You know, would you rather prefer to read books with people or animals or people as the main character and so it just shows students the types of reading experiences that they want to have and it helps them discover the genres that they enjoy reading. I am such a huge fan of helping students really understand the genres because again, if we have students that don't like reading, it's not not that they don't like reading. it's because they haven't found the books that they enjoy yet and so this can be a great tool to use at the beginning of the year to help students figure out the genres that they enjoy reading and you could a couple things. Um I have this for another example but you could put it in one of these like uh sleeve protectors and students could have a dry erase marker and literally every day, it would take them no time at all. every day, they could just go through it with a dry erase marker and figure out the genre that they want to read and then they could pull that book from the book then or the library but it's helping them sort of solidify their own personal reading preferences and helping them realize that there is a reading experience that exist out there that they're going to enjoy. So, this is another freebie that I would love to share with you. Just let us know in the comments if you'd love that link um and Then, if you have followed me for a while and let me see if I can find where it is. If you have followed me for a while, then you definitely see me talk about this on Instagram but I love giving students sticky notes. Let me know in the comments if you have ever printed on sticky notes because that's exactly what this is. Look, it's a sticky note with a little graphic organizer on it and these are one of the very first sort of like response templates that I would give students and I started using this for a couple of reasons. First of all, I've used to have students use a reading journal where they would write down the book that they read. You know, the title of the author, a very traditional sort of reading log and I had them write a summary of the book that they were reading and I quickly realized that one of my students were very disorganized in the and how they kept their journal. They would start in the back of the book. They'd start in their science journal and my students did enjoy writing a summary every single day that became too much and so I realized I needed to do something different to get them to write about their reading um and maybe something that all of my students felt confident and capable with II realized kind of the longer I thought What I realized is that I have students that are not good writers and if I'm asking them to show me what they know and understand about reading, through writing, I am never going to get an accurate picture of their reading ability, their understanding, their ability to use strategies and so I came up with different ways for students to show me that they can, you know, identify the main idea that they can compare and contrast that they can make inferences without writing about it and so, I love using the sticky notes one, students love little sticky notes because it sticks on anywhere. They can stick it right in the page. It's short. It's little. This is not overwhelming for students to complete. If a student knows that all they have to do at the end of reading is fill out this little sticky note that is going to feel so much lighter, so much more fun than having to write an entire reading response or answer questions or even fill out a whole page graphic organizer. So, these are so fun to use at the beginning of the year because the students are one. It's a sticky note. They think it's so cool. They're going to be like my teacher is like a magician because you can print on a sticky note Um but it's small. This is an easy thing for them to do and then like I said, you can either have them stick it on the book. They can stick it in the book or I never had this when I was in the classroom but look at how cute these things are. I found this at Office Depot um and they're just little mini um little mini composition notebooks. You can even have your students stick the sticky note in the composition notebook and write the book that they were reading and again, this is so much more fun for students than AA, Big Reading response activity, a log that they have to fill out. So, it's still is to the same purpose as a reading log or a reading journal but it's presented to them in a way that might be more fun. It might be more appealing. It's just cute and one of the things that I would do sometimes it would be a lot to put on sticky notes. So, I would just print the on the template. You know, this is what the temple looks like. I would just print this on abs and um cut them out but what I would do is I would just collect all of these. I would stack them up and then, you know, if all of my students did the one on main idea, I would quickly flip through and even if I didn't read the picture book, I could tell kind of by what they wrote for main idea of what the details were. Does the student have a pretty good understanding or not? and I would know, do I need to pull somebody for a strategy group? Do I need to reinforce this in a reading conference? And so, it's just a really easy way for me to even check you know, what they're applying. So, sticky notes and even if you don't want to print on the sticky notes, you could give your students at the start of the week a pad of sticky notes and say during reading this week, I want you to stop and jot five times and they can pick and they can choose. They can decide if they want to ask questions, make connections, whatever it is but a sticky note is such an easy way to keep students engaged and again, the size. It is not overwhelming. So, little things like that can be so fun. Um so fun to do that. Jennifer, I love how you said you're afraid to jam the printer with sticky notes. I remember when I first started, I was a little bit terrified as well. Um just observe the direction of the paper goes in and you will be fine. It does not jam up the printer, I promise. Um so yes, okay. Um somebody asked about the notebooks. I got the notebooks from Office Depot. Um I found them in uh when we lived in Houston. I think that's where I found them and I just thought they were so cute. You might be able to get them on Amazon as well but yeah I just thought that this would be such a fun and easy way for students to respond to their reading. Other things that can do graphic organizers. I love graphic organizers kind of for the same reason why I love the sticky notes. Again, if it's, you know, the whole purpose of the graphic organizer is for students to see the visual connection between their thinking with reading um and we I typically did not ask my students to write in complete sentences with graphic organizers. I would have them. You just use words or phrases. So, again, for our struggling students, it's less overwhelming for them to think about. Okay, I only have to write down one word or a few phrases to complete this graphic organizer versus an entire sentence. We want to kind of think about the sort of, you know, what is the path of least resistance that's help our students develop these habits. We can then easily transition them off the sticky notes. off the graphic organizers to more in-depth constructed responses later on in the year but they have to feel confident if we ever want them to get there. They have to feel like they can be successful at reading and so really if you think about your goal for the first 3 weeks of independent Reading is to help your students feel confident and help them feel successful and all of these tools that I'm sharing are going to help your students do that. So, one of the things that you could do is you could give your students organizer and put them in this little sleeves and then give them a dry erase marker. Again, it's the tool. Students love dry erase markers. They love that they get to have a little like pocket like this. They could even then pick and choose which graphic organizer they want to put in there. You're giving them choice even if they're not choosing what they're reading, they can have a choice on how to respond. um and then they can write their response on this. These are great for small group instruction as well. So, again, it's just a small little thing but something like this is going to boost the engagement because the student loves a dry erase marker. So, something is that um other things that you could do with graphic organizers. Again, I love the mini thing. You can print them mini. I actually have a set of graphic organizers and my TPT store that they come on a quarter page but you can also change the printer settings to where your printer will print the graphic organizers. Um I think on a half page or a quarter page and again, it's just small. If you think about a student responding to reading this feels easy. The fact that I only have to spill this one little heart with their characters, trace and feelings that is not overwhelming to a student. So, thinking about. think about your most reluctant readers or you're struggling readers. What is going to feel like something that they can be successful at when independent Reading and those are the types of things that we want to plan for the first couple of weeks. Um other things that you could do is even giving yourself um your students little bookmarks that they can track their reading. Um this is like a little bookmark that shows students that you know, if they have a goal of reading 100 books every time they read a book, they can fill in one of the squares. something they can do at the end of reading it quick. It's simple. It's showing them progress. This is another reason why I love to have students read picture books is because if they read picture books, they could get to 100 books within the first month of school and again, think about a student is a reluctant reader, somebody who does not have a lot of confidence as a reader. if they could read 100 books, even if it's picture books, I mean, picture books are that's that's that's still very much a book but if they can read 100 books, that is going to start to shift their identity of who they are as a reader. So, you about how many reps can I give my students with finishing books? How can I help my students develop this confidence? How can I motivate them to want to read more? So, giving them a little bookmark, a little graph, a little tracker. It can be something as simple as even like uh I was getting mixed up in the video but I just made this one with a bunch of stars on the front um and then every time they read, they get to fill in a star. super simple but things like this are motivating for kids. Things like this are fun for our eight 910 and 11 year olds. Um so yeah they can track the minutes. They can track the books they read they could the genres, um other things that you could have students do um and I've I've I've always try to keep this shorter. My goal is to keep this one short. I'm realizing we're at 46 minutes. So, thank you to everybody who's still watching with me. Um I've a few more things that I'm going to share um and okay, one of the other things are lost my screen there. Um our reading challenges and I'm going to share my screen and kind of show you and these I actually have a freebie of these a product in my TPT store and in my membership but I would do one of these once a month. So, every month we're giving our students a different focus. One could be a read at home challenge. You could do a thirty and thirty. So 30 minutes for 30 days. Um we're looking at genre challenges. Can they read from a different genre every month? You can even have a picture book challenge where again, we want our students to read a different picture book every day. A poetry challenge sort of forcing them to read something that's a little bit different. Um a reading response challenge, you know, something that they're going to respond to a book in a bunch of different ways. A cadet or a an award challenge. You can pick any award. You know, there's so many different reading awards. My students always ask what does it mean if there's a on the book. Explain to them what that means and then challenge them to read, you know, twenty different award winning books. Um one of my favorite challenges that I did with my students was I called a yes. I'll read it challenge and basically what they had to do is they had to go ask their mom, their dad, their sibling, a friend, you know, the principal, whoever it is for a book recommendation and it could either be a book recommendation, a genre recommendation, and then they had to commit to reading it. So, it's just a fun way to get students talking about books and reading something that they might not select from the library. So, a bunch of different things that you could do with that but reading challenge, you can have a different reading challenge every month of the year and that's just another really easy way to keep students excited about their independent reading. Um okay, I love that you guys want. We will share all of the links for this. I just love sharing resources with you guys that I know are going to make Teacher Reading easier for you um and then other things that I like to give my students during independent reading. I know I mentioned this last week but anytime I teach a mini lesson, giving them a strategy ring. Um and then they can have this with them. I like to think about I want to, you you know Independent is meant to be fun. It's meant to boost their confidence and so I want to give them the tools and the resources that they need to maybe be successful and just because I thought something during a mini lesson and maybe reinforce it during a strategy lesson, my students might not have mastered it so they might need a reminder on what a narrator narrator is or they might need a reminder on how characters have different perspectives and what that word means and so, if you can give your students anchor charts, whether it's on a ring or glued in their journal or even a folder, students then know that they can go back and reference that. Um if they come up to something and if we can give them those tools to use during an independent reading, they're going to be much more likely to try to use those tools as well. Um other things that I love giving students are bookmarks. It's similar to the anchor charts but they're different. Um it shows you know what the skill is. Um I'm going to show that because the pink never shows up on the camera but what you know, what does it mean to make predictions? How does that help us as readers and when should we make predictions And then on the back, it has thinking sense and question stems and something like this can also be helpful. Now, everything that I am showing you and sharing with you, they're helpful to give to students but I would not give them to students all at once and this is where the whole we kind of need to have a toolbox filled with resources and tricks and ideas to motivate and challenge and encourage because during the first three Your students are going to be excited about independent Reading just because it's new and you've made it a big deal but after a while, they're going to lose their interest. They're going to lose their motivation. You might have some students that used to love reading and then they're just not going to anymore and then that's when you need to say, hey, I have a new bookmark for us. Let's track our reading. You know, with this this month, we're going to keep track of genre or hey, I have a new resource I want to share with you for independent reading. You know, here's a bookmark for the skills that we've read or hey, I've got some new response activities or here's this cute little notebook that you can use to keep track of the books that you want to read. So, be thinking about sort of that toolbox that you are going to have as a teacher. So, when your students are starting to become less engaged, less motivated, you have an idea of different things that you can give to them and introduce to them to make them more excited and kind of refresh their um their enthusiasm for independent reading. Okay, so I think those are all of the resources that I wanted to share with you and then um I would love to know out of all of the things that I shared if there is anything that you are super excited about with your students um or incorporating, you can let me know in the comments and I see some people talk about the reading challenge link and people talking about the bookmarks. Again, super simple things. Amy asked, what do you put? what did you put in the sticky notes as far as so um let me just talk real quick about the sticky notes in case you have a question and Amy, I hope I answer your question. So, with the sticky notes when you print the template, um it prints off as just a white piece of paper then when you the sticky notes on top. You put the blank sticky notes on top and you run it through the printer again. Then, this template will come on top of it. So, and I have literally a sticky note template for as many anchor charts as I have. So, whatever skill it is, there's sticky notes on this one sheet. It was for me an idea. There's one for making differences. Um a summary, a plot structure, a little Dory Mountain um making connections questions and so whatever sort of skill I'm giving my students, I would maybe give them that sticky note and then They're reading independently. They would just jot down their thoughts and then, depending on kind of depending on how I was using it. If the student was coming like to a strategy group and or I was going to have a reading conference with them, I would have them stick it in their book. Sort of the hard part about having them stick it in their book is sometimes they forget to take it out and then it lives in the book for um a future student to read which is never a bad thing. but a lot of times I would have the students stick these sticky notes in their reading journals um or in their reading folders or I would collect them but again, it's just a really easy way to keep track of students thoughts. So, hopefully that answers your questions about that. Um lost my train of thought here. What was I going to say? Oh, let me know in the comments. So, let me see if there's something else. Um sticky notes. Yay, Jennifer. I'm so glad you're going to try the sticky notes. Um the sticky notes are best to answer the question if you have my sticky note bundle because I have them writing and math and a bunch of different things. They are included in there. That template is included in there. Um I'm going to finish up sort of the last things that are on my outline and then I'll go back and try to answer as many of the questions that I can. Um I just I love talking about reading with you guys and I always get so encouraged and enthusiastic just to see how many of you stick with me all the way up until the end. So, I will happily answer as many questions as I can once I get through Um the few other things that I wanted to mention. So, a couple other things to think about. Oh, one more thing with the sticky notes, one thing that I would do with students sometimes and this is another easy way to give them choice is I would give them like for the week, I would give them this entire page. So each would get their own page and I would tell them by the end of the week, I want you to try to use all six sticky notes. So, they would get to choose if they were reading which you know, when they'd like to apply that skill when they'd like to try it and it is, if it's six sticky notes. So, that's basically one a day and then 1 Day, I have you use too. So, that's another really easy way to increase choice and almost make it a challenge. It's like, hey, can you try to use all six by the end of the week with reading So that's another way that you can kind of like boost that engagement So again, the whole we want students to have as much choice as possible. Um one of the things that I think about with all of these reading response activities, I would say when you're giving your students kind of whatever it is, pitch it with the idea, introduce it with the idea of this is for them. those sticky notes are for them. It is to help them understand it is to help them remember what they're reading. It's to help them have a better reading experience. It's meant to be fun. Um it's meant to sort of like help them have conversations with their classmates um and then let know when something is going to be graded. So, sort of differentiate between this is a tool to help you grow as a reader and now, this is something that I'm going to create. Not everything we give them every single day has to be graded not and here's the other thing, students don't even have to do a written response every single day. You could sometimes just tell your students you get to read today for the fun of it and I'm not even going to ask you to do a graphic organizer unless you want to um or turn anything in. It can just be for the fun of it so they don't always have to have a reading response or tool. It can just be reading because that also helps build their confidence. It helps them have more fun. It sort of takes some of that pressure off of them. um and then just again that reminder, we want to make sure that we're constantly switching up these Routines because whatever it is that you introduce at the start of the year, if it is getting them excited about reading, if it is helping them show you that they understand the skills and strategies. I promise you at the end of of the year, it is longer going to work because that's kind of how teaching is we have to constantly introduce new things and reinvent you know ourselves our students and helping them keep engaged um and so just remind yourself that it is going to take a lot of tools um to keep your students excited about reading but that's why I wanted to share so many of them with you today and then um I think just to reiterate what I said at the beginning, wherever you are at sort of on this journey of helping your students become an independent confident readers know that if all of these things I shared with you if you're like that is overwhelming. I have not even started with independent Reading yet. I don't think I can manage all of that then that's okay. Don't they're here for you when you are ready to take that next step. maybe pick one of the things that I shared and try to during the first, you know, week of school or maybe think about one mini lesson that you want to share that will help your students become, you know, more independent readers and introduce that or maybe just say our goal is only going to start with ten or 15 minutes. So, just know that you as a teacher and your students, we are all on journeys. We're continuing, you know, constantly continuing to learn. Um I think about even now, you know, I've been out of the classroom for a couple of years supporting teachers like you guys full time um and I always think man, I've learned so much in my years as being out of the classroom in some cases I'm like I want to go back because I know I have learned and improved. So, just know that you will always be on a journey of improving and so just commit to making some small tweaks and changes this year to help your students enjoy reading independently just a little bit more. So, that is kind of everything that I wanted to say about independent reading I. Hope you are getting excited about it. Um I just get so excited about the idea of students having time to read independently. Um so, I'm going to try to go back and look for any questions that I might have missed to try to answer quickly in the next 4 minutes. Um and if I miss them, I will definitely catch them in the comments. I always go back and look at the comments and then, like I said, we will definitely share links. Um I might go back and just I'll try to if you ask for a specific link, share it to you on your comment but I'll also probably go back in in the description include the links for the different freebies. Um that way you can get access to them as well. Um let's see Vanna, I love how you said that you gave students at the end to share an independent book and encourage them to read and get other book suggestions that is such a great suggestion um and it's like giving back, letting your students do a book talk. Um I love having students keep a list. It it kind of took me a while to realize that this is a good mini lesson to teach students but I love having students keep a list of books they want to read because then they know when they go to the library, they aren't wondering what should I look for? They know what they're looking for. Um so, letting students talk about their books with classmates can be a great way to have that um list. Um Jennifer, yes, the sticky notes are in the membership so This generic template isn't the sticky notes but then we've also, so, one of the things that we're trying to do with our new membership site is we are creating alignment from whole group instruction to small group to independent Reading. So, for all of the mini lesson objectives, there is the mini lesson, there's an anchor chart, there's a, you know, a little exit ticket, then there's a small group plan for that same objective and then there's a graphic organizer and a sticky note template for every single one of the objectives. So, if you're looking to specifically teach comparing There will be a sticky note specific for comparing characters. If you're teaching your students specifically about um you know, how to identify the narrator, there's going to be a sticky note specific for that. So, there is the sticky notes are included in the membership and they are um specific to the objectives that are included for like the mini lessons and everything. Let's see. Um do you have? Okay, so last week, somebody asked about the mini lesson. Um I have actually blog posts about many lessons and then, I'm not sure if you caught my live from last week but it was about many lessons. Um I will try to go back and like I said, if you want to look in our upper elementary teachers Facebook group under the topics, you should be able to find it um but I'll come back and leave a couple of links for blog posts that have to do with many lessons as well. Let's see other questions Um Sticky notes are part of a bundle. Um they are not a freebie at this time. Um love that you. yes one of our Facebook users said that they're going to use the stickiness, the reading challenges. Both of those are such good ways to get students excited about reading. Um I'm looking to see if I missed any other questions they might have gotten buried with all of of your excitement and enthusiasm for these resources. Let's see. Okay, here we go. Do you start right away or do you wait until you practice talk about the skills or genres Great question, Emily. I'm so glad I caught this. So, a couple of things that you can a couple things with this. So, one, some of your students are naturally going to start doing things and their independent reading before you've taught it to them just because they're ready for it and then, you have other students that when you teach it, they're still not necessarily going to be ready to apply it to their independent reading just because that's where they're at in their journey. So, a couple things that I typically sort of like try to keep in mind as far as um just like practice whatever I whatever resource I am giving my students So, if it is a bookmark, it It is a sticky note. If it is a strategy ring, if it is even a little goal setting bookmark, I will not give it to them to use independently until I have taught a mini lesson on it. So, that even means like graphic organizers, Reading response activities, reading journals, all of those things. If you give your students a little mini notebook, teach them how to use it because otherwise, what's going to happen is they're going to do it incorrectly and they're not going to get the full benefit of it. So, you definitely want to teach your students how to use everything um which means you're slowly going to be introducing these things time. I think sometimes we forget that after, you know, the first 3 weeks of school, we're really sort of like boosting up our students for um you know, that those habits and behaviors and then we kind of transition into the skills teaching about characters, theme, making differences but we still want to sprinkle in things that do we have to do with reading habits and behaviors and so it's okay. It's in November. you come back and talk to your students about how to respond to reading, how to find books in the library, how to abandon books, how to, you know, keep list of books that they enjoy reading. You can sprinkle those lessons in all throughout. So, um the nice thing is is when you sort of ease into all of these things really that first week because you haven't taught them anything else other than to read your students get to enjoy reading just for the fun of it um and especially if you focus on picture books. So, sort of to answer your question in a short, very concise way. I will always introduce something before I let my students do it independently. Um okay, I am going to go back here once I log off but we have been on for an hour and I want to make sure you guys feel like you can leave. So, I'm going to Go ahead and end this live but I look forward to Wednesdays so much and I just enjoy chatting with you guys. This has been so much fun for me and so thank you so much for joining. We will be back next Wednesday and next Wednesday. we are talking all about strategy groups which is one of my favorite ways to introduce small groups to students um and I'm going to go back later tonight after probably dinner. so it might be a little bit later this evening but I'm going to share a bunch of links and answer questions. So, just know that if you ask a question or if you're watching the replay and need something, always let us know and I will those things and I will see you guys next week. Thanks so much for
