The Thinking Reader

Cultivating Critical Thinkers in the Classroom

Ciera Harris

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781394276172
• eBook ISBN: 9781394276189
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

Concepts, lesson plans, and strategies for making reading lessons work

The Thinking Reader: 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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 What Reading Really Is
• CHAPTER 2 Setting Up for Success
• CHAPTER 3 The Reader’s Blueprint
• CHAPTER 4 Reading and the Brain
• CHAPTER 5 Schema: The Power of Perspective
• CHAPTER 6 Curiosity: The Motivation Maximizer
• CHAPTER 7 Metacognition: Inquiry and Independence
• CHAPTER 8 Metacognitive Strategies for Success
• CHAPTER 9 Talking (Meaningfully) About Texts
• CHAPTER 10 Fostering Critical Thinking in the Classroom
• CHAPTER 11 Building Persistence and Cultivating the Reader’s Mindset
• Closing
• Index
• EULA