From Striving to Thriving: Synopsis and Supplemental Materials

Reading the book, From Striving to Thriving, is full of thoughtfull ideas and tips that are grounded in research. My highlighter was smoking and my pen marked up the margins like crazy. Was this just me? I think the most common notation I made was, “YASSS!” Maybe not the most grammatically correct, but I sure did enjoy the reaffirmations I had page after page while reading this book.

I recorded several Facebook Lives as I read this book. Check out the below videos as I share some of my thoughts.

Chapters One and Two

Want to see the freebies I shared? Check them out here!

Chapters Three Through Six

Looking for the freebies mentioned in this video? Grab your FREE high/ low reading passage here.

Grab the FREE Reading partnerships pack in this blog post.

Chapters Seven and Eight

Practice and Lessons

Did you see all of the Practice and Lessons at the back of the book? These are fantastic. Many of these more in depth ways to implement suggestions from the book. There are also several assessment forms that are featured in the back of the book. The full size version of these forms are included FREE on Scholastic’s website. The site is password protected, but the password is embedded in your book!

All the Practices and Lessons are ALSO available. If you are able to, you can just print these off as your reading lesson plan for the day ;). I mean, what administrator is going to argue with Stephanie Harvey!?!?!

The Big Takeaways

What are some big ideas that I took away from the text?

Children need time to READ. Period. I already knew this, but some of this statistics and research about how we are serving (or maybe it would be a disservice?) striving readers was shocking and disappointing.

The power of a good book is invaluable. I know personally, my “watershed” books were The Babysitter’s Club. While I had always enjoyed reading, this series made me a Reader with a capital R.

This take away was somewhat embedded in the section on teaching thinking-intensive reading, but really spoke to me. We MUST teach students that comprehension strategies are to be used seamless and interchangeable, depending on our thinking of the text. In the past, I have been guilty of spending so much time on one strategy that students have asked, “Do you want me to ask questions with this or make a connection?” I felt like I had been hit by a 2 by 4.