Analyzing Relationships: Learning to Compare and Contrast

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Learning to compare and contrast different ideas deepens students’ understanding of what they read. How should you begin? Have students think of a question that compares and contrasts concepts, characters, or story elements. This can work for both fiction and nonfiction books. You can introduce this during a whole-class read aloud. You might ask students […]

Early Emergent Readers: Learning to Self-Monitor

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One of the most important things for an emergent reader to learn is to check that what they read makes sense, looks right, and sounds right. This is called self-monitoring. Often the teacher does the monitoring for the student, but it is critical that students learn to check themselves. One of the first ways that […]

Teaching Tip: Collecting and Using Data to Inform Teaching

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Many years ago, I was sitting in the Columbus, Ohio, airport after presenting at the National Reading Recovery conference. I eavesdropped on a conversation across the aisle, and that’s how I met Maryann McBride, a Reading Recovery Teacher Leader from Virginia. She was showing Excel data about Reading Recovery students to a group of teachers […]

Teaching Tip: Cause and Effect in the Classroom

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Teaching students how to locate cause and effect in the text can help them learn how to analyze relationships between people, events, and ideas. To begin, introduce cause and effect to students using very simple stories. Familiar tales such as The Three Little Pigs can provide a great starting point. After reading the book, ask students, […]

Teaching Tip: Learning to Cross-Check

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Beginning readers need to learn to check one kind of information with another; this is called cross-checking. Students might check meaning (via the picture) with visual information (via the first letter of the word). They also may check that the words they say match the number of words they point to. Cross-checking leads to self-correction […]

Need More Books?

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[This post is a guest post from our Marketing Coordinator, Rachel. Rachel handles lots of the marketing and social media business for Pioneer Valley Books. Today she’s sharing some awesome updates from a couple of their digital projects.] At Pioneer Valley Books, we love doing whatever we can to ensure that teachers have as many […]

Fan Mail of the Month: Thanks, Eliza!

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We love getting fan mail from young readers here at Pioneer Valley Books! Students write letters to all our characters, but Bella and Rosie are definitely fan favorites around here! I especially loved this recent letter from Eliza to Bella and Rosie! In the letter, Eliza writes: Dear Bella and Rosie, I love you, Bella […]

Get back into the school spirit with BookBuilder Online!

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It’s September, which in our world only means one thing: back to school! Our BookBuilder™ Online tool is such a great resource for getting kids excited to be back in school. BookBuilder™ Online is a fun, easy way to personalize stories for young readers. Just insert the student’s name and the names of important people in […]

Our August BookBuilders!

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Every month, we create two free, printable books and make them downloadable via our BookBuilder Online. For August, we’ve got two awesome new stories for you! Because August means back to school season, our first story is called “Back to School.” (Level 2/B) Our second story this month is perfect for fall weather. It’s called “Delicious […]