Simply Novel Blog - Teaching Tips and Ideas for Teachers

Summer school provides an excellent opportunity for English teachers to engage with students outside of the traditional school year. While some tea...

Several years ago, I read an interesting article from the New York Times about helping boys to become “readers” (Boys and Reading: Is there any Hop...

Reading workshop is a student-centered approach to teaching reading that helps you meet the needs of your readers by creating the space, time, and support needed to grow. During reading workshop, students share about books they love and spend significant amounts of time reading independently, and you get to spend the time conferences with students to learn about how to help them grow and to celebrate their growth.

Inspiring students to actually read can be a challenge. Many students choose to take the shortcut and read only the Spark Notes version or watch a YouTube video about the book. But as teachers and lovers of literature, we know this is not the same as reading the original text.  Here are some of our favorite practices for getting students to actually do their assigned reading.