Welcome to Unleashing Readers!
The goal of Unleashing Readers is to be a go-to resource for all levels of teachers to find resources for utilizing the best pieces of literature and nonfiction in their classroom. We hope to do this by making our website specifically tailored to give teachers exactly what they need.
For each book we review, we will include a summary, our thoughts, potential discussion questions, quotes/pages we flagged, and books that are similar. To make the review even more useful for teachers, we will include how we would use the book in our classroom, including if we recommend the book for a read aloud, literature circle/book club, close reading/analysis, and/or classroom library buy:
To us, these four suggestions are quite different. If we recommend a book for:
Read Aloud
This would be a great choice to read aloud to all students in the class. We often suggest this category when the book has strong, widespread appeal to many types of students.
Lit Circle/Book Club
This text would work very well for discussion within small groups. We often suggest this category when the book offers great points of discussion, but it might not appeal to every student in the class.
Close Reading/Analysis
There are many passages within the book that would be great for close analysis. We often suggest this category when a book has complex passages or great sections to teach literary elements to students.
Classroom Library
This would be a great addition to your classroom library. Often, these books fit well with a specific type of student, but we definitely think it is worth purchasing for your classroom.
Every classroom is different, and therefore, our categorizing is merely a suggestion. Please feel free to comment on a review if you feel a book might be used in other ways. Each review will also be categorized by genre, sub-genre, format, and teacher uses. These categories allow you to find exactly what you need by clicking or searching for a specific category. The reviews will also be tagged with topics that are found within the book. This allows you to find specific books that fit into a certain unit, topic discussion, or theme.
Another resource we are hoping you find useful is our Navigating Literary Elements page. On this page you will find a list of books that we recommend for teaching different literary elements. This page is continuously evolving as we add more elements and change/edit/add to our lists.
We hope that you find Unleashing Readers to be useful.
Please contact us at unleashingreaders@gmail.com if you have any questions,
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Sounds like a lot of work for you and less for me — thanks! 🙂 I appreciate the valuable resource categories — all important to a classroom literacy teacher.
C, ha! Yes, but we like doing the work as long as it is easy for others!
Really good to put the books into categories and to be able to search, too. Sounds like this will be a great resource!
Thanks, Linda. Our goal was to make it as easy as possible, so we are glad you think it will help!
I love the various options by which you’ll review books. Very helpful!
So glad! We tried to make it as helpful as we could 🙂
Loving so far what you two ladies are up to here! COngrats on your new blog and so excited for your new journey together! I will be spreading the word. 🙂