How do we build a love of literacy in our classrooms? Do our students know how important it is to us that all of our children love reading? We all have our favorite subjects to teach, and we may even say or think, "Well, I'm not really a reader," or, "I'm a math person." As hard as we try, we may pass these messages on to our students. Gasp! Having preferences is natural, but it's important as teachers that we do all we can to help children find books they love and build lifelong reader habits.

Having a positive character in the classroom is more important now than ever before. With so many demands on instructional time, it can be challenging to work in community building, problem solving, work on building self esteem, and the many keys to healthy living and socialization. Our counselors are stretched thin, but there are ways that we can all work on these topics. In our reading lessons, we can try to get more from our teaching "buck" by building on these themes through literature and writing. Today, I want to share with you a few titles and ideas I've come across that you could include within your lessons.

No matter what grade you teach, poetry can be used to support all levels of readers. Poems can be read in a short amount of time and used simply for enjoyment or for deeper literacy skills. For most of our little people, the poetry we share in the classroom may be the only exposure to poetry too, and how sad is that? So, let's change that up and talk about how we can make poetry a part of every day.

When I think of books that demonstrate strong sentence fluency, I think of books that have creative sentence structure. Sentences flow well and are carefully crafted to best express the author's message. Sentences can be long and winding joining one idea to the next or can be purposefully short and choppy, but the message is clear.

With writing, we all have to find our own voice. To me, voice is demonstrated by a writer's style, phrasing, use of words, and the way he/she guides the reader to visualize and understand the central message of a piece. When I am working with kids on finding their voice, I often use mentor texts that are unique. Author studies are very useful when teaching voice because you can "hear" the author's voice across the texts you use. In this post, I'll share my favorite authors for working on voice and what makes them great choices for teachers.