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The Thinking Reader: Cultivating Critical Thinkers in the Classroom
Concepts, lesson plans, and strategies for making reading lessons work
The Thinking Cultivating Critical Thinkers in the Classroom is the frazzled teacher's guide to setting up any grade 2-4 classroom for reading success. You won't find any busywork, condescending lectures, or boring worksheets in this book. Instead, you'll learn flexible reading strategies to blend into your lessons at the start of the school year that will support your students for years to come. This book also debunks old-school ideas about reading instruction and explains the concepts that you'll need to know as you help students build a foundation for their future as readers.
Former elementary teacher and instructional coach Ciera Harris has achieved remarkable, replicable results with young readers, not with a rigid system or program, but with a new approach to thinking about reading. In this book, you'll learn why it makes sense to go beyond all the lessons of phonics, fluency, and vocabulary by making reading personal to each student. This easy-to-use approach has helped teachers across the country create a culture of reading within their classrooms, so students—even those that struggle the most with reading—can start view themselves as readers. Help students learn based on what interests them, as individuals, and watch budding readers bloom.
Discover why reading is not a series of decoding skills, but a personal, powerful act of thinking Learn the steps to setting up your classroom for reading success at the beginning of the year Get engaging lesson plans and techniques for implementing primary reading strategies like schema, asking questions, metacognition, and so much more Overcome common roadblocks, including student resistance to reading With The Thinking Reader, elementary school teachers in grades 2-4 can build the ultimate framework for reading success.
The Thinking Cultivating Critical Thinkers in the Classroom is the frazzled teacher's guide to setting up any grade 2-4 classroom for reading success. You won't find any busywork, condescending lectures, or boring worksheets in this book. Instead, you'll learn flexible reading strategies to blend into your lessons at the start of the school year that will support your students for years to come. This book also debunks old-school ideas about reading instruction and explains the concepts that you'll need to know as you help students build a foundation for their future as readers.
Former elementary teacher and instructional coach Ciera Harris has achieved remarkable, replicable results with young readers, not with a rigid system or program, but with a new approach to thinking about reading. In this book, you'll learn why it makes sense to go beyond all the lessons of phonics, fluency, and vocabulary by making reading personal to each student. This easy-to-use approach has helped teachers across the country create a culture of reading within their classrooms, so students—even those that struggle the most with reading—can start view themselves as readers. Help students learn based on what interests them, as individuals, and watch budding readers bloom.
Discover why reading is not a series of decoding skills, but a personal, powerful act of thinking Learn the steps to setting up your classroom for reading success at the beginning of the year Get engaging lesson plans and techniques for implementing primary reading strategies like schema, asking questions, metacognition, and so much more Overcome common roadblocks, including student resistance to reading With The Thinking Reader, elementary school teachers in grades 2-4 can build the ultimate framework for reading success.
464 pages, Paperback
Published March 18, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 16, 2026
I've taken some of Ciera Harris's free comprehension bootcamp classes in the past and was motivated to pick up her book to help me grow my professional practice with comprehension. As a reading interventionist I feel like I get "stuck" in instruction with foundational reading strategies and I know I need to get better at pushing students to think as we read. "To be a.reader, it does not matter if a student struggles with Fluency. It does not matter if they can't decode words. It does not matter if they don't know a single sight word. Students can still be readers. How? Because reading is thinking. ...Even readers who can't read the words themselves but are being read to can do the thinking part, which is the most critical part." pg. 4 CH explains the foundations of reading, the cognitive processes behind it, metacognitive skills, and provides strategiea amd lessons for quality instruction to help me transform my students from disengaged reluctant readers into confident capable readers and thinkers. Great resource!
March 20, 2025
Absolutely exceptional! I knew there had to be a reason my students weren’t comprehending and I finally have answers. This is a must read for all elementary and even middle school aged educators!
July 14, 2025
Great thinking, science based, and will help you with teaching your readers to think and comprehend. Definitely add this to you must reads teachers.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews