Find Reading Power Titles in our District!
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For recommended books in your own school libraries:http://sd68libraries.pbworks.com/BiblioWiki-68
Just click on the elementary school library of your choice and then go to "Reading Power Titles" in the sidebar.
Adrienne's Nonfiction Reading Power list: NFRP book list.doc
Adrienne's Fiction Reading Power list: RP Fiction.doc
Adrienne's Latest Resources List: 
Find more booklists at Kids Books.
Blackline Masters for Adrienne's strategies.
In her two books Reading Power and Nonfiction Reading Power (both are available at the DRC - just click on the title links) as well as in the two workshops we attended in Nanaimo, Adrienne focused on helping us think about teaching comprehension – or “teaching students how to think while they read.”
It’s easier said than done! As expert readers, we no longer remember the steps involved in developing expertise as readers. As one of Adrienne’s students said to her, “What does thinking look like?” We need to make thinking visible for kids. Explicitly teaching the strategies that good readers use is a starting place. (See Instructional Strategies for some ideas.) And Adrienne reminds us that we need to remember the gradual release of responsibility – especially the “training wheel” step of guided, supported practice.
What are the differences for fiction and non-fiction?
Adrienne also reminded us that we need to make visible the differences between reading fiction and reading nonfiction. The first and most obvious is text features. The purpose of nonfiction text features isn’t simply to enhance, augment or provide “interest,” but, because there are so many formats in nonfiction and so many ways to read it (unlike fictions’ beginning-to-end structure), the text features provide essential map to guide the reader. Reading nonfiction without a deep understanding of text features is like visiting a city without a guide book. Chances are very good you’ll miss what’s most important.
CLASSROOM CONNECTIONS
Metacognition
Adrienne Gear writes about the boy who asked, What does thinking look like?” Adrienne’s books are really an answer to that question. She wanted to “let [students] in to the secret: The secret to becoming a successful reader is to learn to think while you read.” She attempts to show children concretely and visually what thinking looks like.
Of course, it isn’t only when we read that we need to think! Listening, like reading, is a metacognitive process. To help students understand this, Adrienne Gear suggests a two-sided anchor chart that includes not only what we do on the outside when we listen (make eye contact, for example), but also what we are doing on the inside. You can find her chart on page 17 of Nonfiction Reading Power. Below is a “plus-ed” version by Tammy Reynolds and Donna Anderson and a picture of the poster in Donna’s classroom: good listeners class chart #2.doc
Book Detectives:
With the help of your teacher librarian, pull a selection of fiction and nonfiction for students to explore in pairs. Give them a Venn diagram to document what’s similar, what’s different and what’s the same. At the end, you might get students to use some of the text features they thought were most effective in a nonfiction article that informs parents about the school.
Asking Questions:
Good readers/thinkers ask good questions. Too often our focus is on answering questions. Cinnabar teacher Caroline Morrison has graciously shared her lesson sequence to promote powerful questions using Jon Muth’s picture book The Three Questions (available at the DRC - follow the title link to order). This Tolstoy story works for kids young and old as a way to introduce questions and move from literal or “quick” questions to inferential, deep-thinking questions. Caroline has created the lesson as a way to also think about social responsibility at the beginning of the year. This story could be used as an anchor text for asking questions for fiction or nonfiction. Thanks Caroline!