Choosing Books for Reading Instruction and Independent Reading

 Choosing Books in my Classroom:
I have spent quite a bit of time and money developing my library of picture books that I think are great resources for modeling and teaching reading comprehension strategies.  Picture books are wonderful resources for engaging children of all elementary grade levels and even for modeling specific strategies at the middle school level.  I also love to incorporate non-fiction picture books into all content areas as well.  I try to have a resource center of picture book texts available for each big umbrella topic we study.  I find that the kids get so much more out of reading and searching through these types of texts, rather than just assigning them pages in a textbook.  "Mentor texts" are also really great for modeling writing and teaching students about specific writing genres.  My students are encouraged to go to the "mentor text" area during their stages of writing to get ideas and refresh their memories about what we have discussed in mini-lessons.  Lucy Calkins gives a great list of mentor texts in her "Units of Study" series that I often refer to.  One of my favorite mentor text authors is Cynthia Rylant.

Comprehension Strategy Teaching/Independent Reading:

I came across a podcast from Sharon Taberski, author of On Solid Ground: Strategies for Teaching Reading, K-3, where she discusses Book Choice; how she chooses books for teaching comprehension strategies and guides her readers to independent book selections.  I like how Sharon said that she chooses a comprehension book not just because it is a good strategy book, but it is a book that she loves and knows the kids will love too.  She cites how important it is to engage the kids first and then look for how to incorporate strategy instruction, oral language and vocab., phrasing, and prior knowledge, etc.   For guiding independent selections she says that we need to be "a whole lot more careful about the books we put into our children's hands for independent reading."  In order to make the best use of students' independent reading time they need to be reading a book with 98-99% word accuracy.  Too often children are choosing books that they cannot read or are too easy because they've read them too many times.  She also discusses the benefits of "look books". 

How do you use picture books and mentor texts in your classroom?