In the early elementary school years, early literacy is a strong focus. Our goal as educators is to build strong, fluent, confident decoders and readers. We want students to build stamina and engage with books for much of the literacy block. You can do this with first graders starting on the very first day of school! Independent reading is seen by some educators as a waste of time, just page flipping. I even had an administrator tell me that half the students in any given class would likely have their books upside down during this time. With an organized and […]