Educators are great at sharing the things they love in the classroom. If you are looking for game changing professional books or classroom essentials, I’ve got you covered.
Reading Block Essentials
Reading Essentials: This is the book that started it all for me and changed the way I taught and helped me focus on what matters most during my reading block.
Daily5: This book is a great guide for structuring your reading block, especially in grades K-2.
Timer: Using a timer helps keep you on track during your entire reading block.
Space and Places: This is the book that helped me get rid of my teacher desk and helped me give the space in my classroom back to my students.
Mini Lesson Essentials
Reading with Meaning: This book changed the way I taught reading. It is a must read if you want a peek into what it could look like for teachers and students to be co-learners in a classroom.
Reading Strategies Book: This is a great book to read when you are looking for strategies to help you teach your mini lessons.
Mr. Sketch Scented Markers: I love these markers for all of my anchor chart needs.
Chart Paper: Having chart paper at home and at work always helped me be prepared whenever inspiration struck.
Read Aloud With Accountable Talk
Raising the Standards Through Chapter Books: This is a great book to get you started with read aloud with accountable talk as well as weaving in reading response.
Post it notes: These are must for prepping your read aloud text with your turn and talk stems in advance. You will use one color for modeling your think aloud and another for student turn and talk opportunities.
Small Group
The Next Step Forward In Guided Reading: This book is a great resource for knowing how to support all of the readers in your classroom in guided reading.
Teaching Reading in Small Groups: This is a great book to get you started with all things strategy groups.
Conferring: This book will give you a roadmap for conferring with your readers.
Upper Elementary Must Haves
What Every 5th Grade Teacher Needs to Know About Setting Up and Running a Classroom: This book helped me make the transition from teaching 2nd grade to teaching 5th grade. I found it to be very informative and full of great ideas.
Whole Brain Teaching: This book will help give you brain based techniques for classroom management.
Classroom Library Must Haves
Stickers for books: I used these to categorize my books by genre. I labeled a bin with a genre label such as “Fiction” and then put a colored sticker on the label and the books that went in that bin in order to help students put books back in the correct bins.
Dish pans: These made great bins for my books and helped me organize my classroom library.
