About
Welcome to Reading Without Limits.
My name is Maddie Witter. I’m the author of Reading Without Limits: Teaching Strategies to Build Independent Reading for Life.
I am a founding teacher of KIPP Infinity Charter School, one of the top performing middle schools in New York City. At KIPP Infinity, I taught literacy, and was the school’s founding Director of Instruction for six years where I supervised teacher development and curriculum for the reading, writing, content and nonfiction studies programs. Currently, I’m working on bringing educational equality to incarcerated youth in Melbourne, Australia.
E-mail: witter.maddie@gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you!
Twitter: Maddie_Witter
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/readingwithoutlimits
If you are interested in checking out Reading Without Limits, you can find it here. Feel free to also stop by http://www.reading-without-limits.com where I share a ton of free resources. We’d also love your support on facebook or follow us on twitter.
Recent Guest Blog Posts
February 25, 2013 Edutopia “Beyond Q+A”
February 19, 2013 The Innovative Educator “Five Ways to Build Lifelong Readers”
January 31, 2013 KIPP “How to Get Better at Push-Ups and Reading”
January 11, 2013 Edtech Digest “Goodbye Reading Journals, Hello Social Networking”
Recent Press
February 20, 2013 ABC 7:30 Going to School in a Juvenile Detention Centre
May 9, 2012 The Conversation Hour
April 23, 2012 The Age “Lessons at Parkville Beat School of Hard Knocks”
April 20, 2010 The Age “Globetrotters Offer Hope from Harlem”
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Reading Without Limits 
Maddie,
I just wanted to drop a quick thank you off to you. I sit in Starbucks every Saturday morning before school reading your blog and I realized you deserve a big thank you! If you were here, I’d buy your latte J I read your blog diligently, and although I haven’t had a chance to visit Infinity (as of yet…) I love your school! I just want you to know that I am very appreciative of all the time you spend faithfully updating your blog. I know that you probably don’t see the fruit of your labor in that area, but out here in CA, I consider it one of my top resources. Although we are full grown, we are a small KIPP school and will never have the funding for a literacy specialist, so I am fully taking advantage of all the work you are doing at your school. I just wanted to thank you and let you know that your impact reaches beyond NYC; the KIPPsters here in Fresno are benefiting so much from your willingness to share your wealth of knowledge. Thank you!!
Tina Brennan
6th Grade Reading & Writing
KIPP Academy Fresno
Tina,
Thank you soooo much for your sweet notes! I’ve been up to my ears in theater rehearsals as of late (we are putting on Anne Frank next week), but I plan to share more things. Donna Santman came and literally rocked my world. All I can say is, do everything in partner books… more to come later when the website doesn’t shut down every time I try to update something!
Thanks again- hopefully I’ll see you at Summit 🙂
Maddie
I totally echo Tina- this is the best resource out there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks so much for doing this. WOW.
Thanks!
Helen Cosner
KIPP Journey Academy
Ms. Witter,
Thank you SO much for all the work you put into this blog and the work you do at Infinity! I was absolutely blown away when I visited your class last spring…you are a phenomenal teacher. (I was even lucky enough to see the kids perform “A Raisin in the Sun”). Although I’m still in college, this blog is so helpful to me because I tutor 3 extremely low 9th graders in reading and writing. I hope I get the chance to visit Infinity again some time!
Catharine B.
Washington, DC
Read three entries, thought “This must be another KIPPster,” clicked About, and hey, it’s the Head KIPPster of reading teachers! (: Thank you so much for doing this.
Hi Maddie,
What strategies or templates do you use when teaching kids how to take notes before meeting in a book club?
I have all these specific things I want to teach my 7th graders to look for as they’re reading, but I don’t have a good note-taking system for them to keep track of it all.
Thanks!
-Emily LeVasseur
KIPP Aspire Academy
Hi Emily,
I would recommmend a composition notebook. Its already set up in a three column format. For the left of the red line, I would put the symbol for thinking. In the large column in the middle would be their thinking and the right column is the page number. I would recommend collecting it once a week and letting the kids know what their daily expectations are in terms of how many entries, what type of entries, etc.
Maddie
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Hey Maddie,
I’m trying to watch the videos that are linked from your book’s webpage, specifically the one of teachers trying to distract kids during a read-a-thon, but I only see one video (the promo) when I click the link to vimeo. I’ve signed in and everything. What am I missing? So excited to see the KIPP Infinity crew in their full glory!
Thanks,
Shipley
Go to http://www.vimeo.com/readingwithoutlimits
Then, click on ‘videos’. From there, the videos are password protected. The password is readingwithoutlimits
Please let me know if that doesn’t work! How all is well Shipley!
Maddie
Hello, Ms. Witter!! This is kind of scary for me, but I am going to leave the information here anyway. On my blog, Charts ‘N’ Chit Chat, I am hosting a summer long book study on your Reading Without Limits Book. Feel free to come by, weigh in, help with the discussion, or just see what we are thinking! You can find the book study on Wednesday posts throughout June and July at chartsnchitchat.com.
Love your book!
Thanks Jennifer. I’d love to stop by!
Awesome! http://www.chartsnchitchat.com
Come on by!