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You know one of my obsessions is reading. But how do you get students reading when they barely have any language yet? And what if you don’t have the books, the time, or the budget?

In this episode, Adam Giedd joins me to share how he got novice learners reading. Adam is a former Spanish teacher who now writes short readers for novice learners. He once taught 920 students in five schools, 30 minutes a week, with nothing on the walls, and he still got them reading. He came to the Spanish Teacher Academy to share these ideas, and the session was so good we had to bring it to the podcast.

In this episode:

• Why we need to write for our struggling readers, not our strongest ones
• Why Adam focuses only on verbs when he co-creates a text with his class
• Adam’s shortcut for teachers who don’t have time to learn Write and Discuss: backward plan from a short book
• How to start silent sustained reading tomorrow with $0
• Why short, easy books help students trust you as a reader
• Book Bingo: Adam’s simple way to get students reading the same book five times

Pick one idea, try it this week, and tell me how it goes.

Links:

Confident Pigeon (Adam’s reading platform): https://www.confidentpigeon.com/

Read the blog post

Connect with Adam

Episode 84, The Power of Reading with Dr. Stephen Krashen

Join the Spanish Teacher Academy: https://growingwithproficiency.com/academy