This professional development workshop is called “Ready to Read! Using ‘Teaching Books’ Educator Resources in the ELA Classroom to Increase Literacy Skills, and Promote Reflection on Cultural Representation in Books.” Teaching Books is a curated collection of instructional materials about children’s and young adult books and authors. Using Teaching Books, educators can: identify exceptional books that reflect diverse cultural experiences, interests, and ability levels; obtain resources paired with book titles that further reading enjoyment, contextual knowledge, and educational relevance; easily share resources with students, and others in the learning community.

The workshop’s learning objectives are to:

• Learn what Teaching Books is
• Learn how to access Teaching Books as an educator, and navigate the interface
• Learn how to explore Teaching Books lesson plans that correlate to ELA Standards, as well as ready-to-go activities that can be implemented as warmups & bell ringers
• Learn how Teaching Books acts a tool for encouraging reflection on cultural representation in books, and for students to learn more about the diversity in the authors they’re reading, and the themes they’re studying
• Provide time for you to explore Teaching Books!

The workshop is structured as an “I Do” “We Do” “You Do” learning experience with a short lecture, followed by a guided demo of the resource, and ending with a hands-on participant activity in the form of a digital worksheet. The worksheet asks participants to explore different aspects of the Teaching Books site, save interesting links for potential classroom use, and look through the student-facing resources.

This tutorial was created as part of the advanced certificate LMS program at Queens College (2022), with the intention of being introduced to faculty at Berkeley Carroll.