Free Back-to-School Resources

Setting up routines is an important part of the start of our school year. Not only do we set up procedural routines, but we also set up instructional routines. One instructional routine that I used frequently with my students involved close reading.

One issue that I had using the basal texts with my students is that they were very reluctant to read the stories multiple times. And to be honest, I wasn't really thrilled to read those dry stories multiple times either. Another issue was that using textbooks made it more difficult to interact with the text, i.e. highlighting, circling, underlining etc. When I decided to write my own texts and follow-up activities, I wanted them to be short and interesting so that reading them multiple times wasn't a chore. Since I was using them in my small-group lessons, I also differentiated them into different levels. I have blogged several times about close reading, so if you are interested in reading those posts you can {click here}.

I am joining together with many elementary teacher-authors to share free literacy resources to help start your year off right! The resources that I'm sharing for free is the Consitution Day close reading text and activities. I know that Constitution Day always sneaks up on me, and this resource is something easy to implement with little prep. Students will synthesize information, refer to primary sources, and write a short opinion paragraph. And if you are teaching in a virtual or hybrid model this fall, I also have adapted all of the texts and activities for Google Slides.

You can download the free ebook of teaching resources by clicking the image below!

If you try close reading with your students and love it, I have a whole year of close reading in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. As part of The Reading Crew ebook giveaway, I am also contributing my fall bundle of close reading passages.