Be a Guided Reading Master!

Hi everyone! We've officially been on break for a week, and it. Is. Glorious. I've had the opportunity to spend tons of time with my own kiddos at the Field Museum and the zoo, READ for myself (currently The Goldfinch... I'm liking it, but I quickly realized why it was taking FOREVER to move along on my Kindle... The book is nearly 800 pages!), and to fall asleep while putting my kids to sleep - and not feel guilty.

One thing I do want to make a concerted effort to do is to prep for next year way in advance so my to do list at the end of August isn't a mile long. Well, it probably will be anyways, but I'll make a dent while I'm much less stressed!

Anyways, one thing that was on my to do list ALL YEAR that is DONE is my leveled guided reading lesson plans!

Guided reading is hands-down my favorite part of the day. FAVORITE. It's such a great way to really interact with each student, to help them in a very specific way, and to see results from all our hard work.

One thing that kinda revolutionized my prep for guided reading was preparing lessons for each book, rather than for the group of students. It sounds kind of odd. We teach students, not the book, right? But in my personal and school library of guided reading books, I can think of very specific skills that align perfectly with certain books. For example, when my beginning of the year firsties need to work on predictions supported with information from the text, I pull out "Where's the Baby?" (in the AlphaKids series by Sundance... The best guided reading book ever. And it's a level D people!) When I know the book well, and have planned for that book well, I'm better at making quick instructional decisions with the students in front of me.

I feel like, especially as my students reach more challenging reading levels, I'm not always sure what skills are level-appropriate for my students. I want to make sure I'm using challenging teaching and questioning skills to really build up my students' abilities as readers and thinkers.

So, that's where these lesson plans come into play.

I've broken down skills in the following areas for each guided reading level from A through M:

• Word work - I do this right before the lesson, and link it to words they'll find in the text
• Vocab preview
• Before reading - Activating prior knowledge, noticing text features, etc.
• During reading - These are especially focused on accuracy, fluency, and self-monitoring for comprehension
• After reading - With questions/skills that are more literal as well as higher-level

For an early kindergartener...

And for an early second grader...

Just add guided reading books and you'll be ready to go!

This pack can be found {HERE}, but I'll also give away a free copy to the first person to comment with their email address.

Have a great day!

Five for Friday... A Day Late!

Well, I'm finally back with a post! I'm going to try to start posting more than once a month! :) Last week grades for first quarter were due, and that basically consumed my life... So now that that's over, there's a bit more time to take pictures, blog, and breathe.

I'm linking up with Five for Friday (a day late!) to share with you what we did this week!

1. We've been working hard in guided reading! We use the second half of our reader's notebooks to write about our reading during guided reading. With my below level students, we spend a LOT of time doing guided writing, where we work together to write a sentence or two about our text each time we meet. While I help model the writing, the students are sounding out and writing in their own notebooks. (Note: I have gotten VERY good at writing upside down!) I've also made little on-the-fly word family flip books with my students (within their notebooks), previewing a word they'll see a lot in the text. It's good reinforcement of a sight word, understanding how to use a chunk we know to figure out new words, and this is a quick tactile way for students to practice making words.

2. We've started learning about Pilgrims and Native Americans in social studies. I started the unit by providing students with photographs (from the Scholastic First Thanksgiving website) of a Pilgrim homesite and Wampanoag village (through their Virtual Field Trip resources) and artifacts from the Lakeshore Native American Resource Box. Students worked in groups to record their observations and inferences about what they saw. They didn't know we were going to be learning about Pilgrims and Native Americans before we did this, so I also had them guess what we'd be studying based on the photos and artifacts.

3. In reading, we focused a LOT on using schema when reading nonfiction books. I know a lot of people use a T-chart (What I Know/What I Learned) to track prior knowledge and new learning, but I really like using a web. It gives the opportunity for students to more easily notate corrected misconceptions (see the "have gills" part of the web in the upper right corner) and to add to schema by branching off of a part of the web (like the "have a blowhole on their back" portion on the left).

4. We are adding to our CRAFT menu with our new reading strategies! I used Ladybug's Teacher Files' CRAFT board as a modified version of the CAFE menu. I also reworded some of the strategies we've added to be more first grade friendly. (I wish my bulletin board was a bit wider... Those are too close together for my liking!)

5. I am FINALLY feeling better after a rough week with little to no voice. How cute is this letter from one of my sweeties?!

Have a great weekend!

Group Research Projects and a Freebie Rubric

Last year, I studied Comprehension and Collaboration with some AMAZING coworkers. If you've never heard of it, it's a fabulous read!

 

A big focus in the book is using inquiry projects to fuel student reading, writing, and content-area work. My grade level restructured our reading units to include lots of inquiry projects during the second half of the school year. We are gearing up for our first big inquiry project - Should there be zoos? I'm so pumped!

To prepare my students for these upcoming projects, we did a lot of cross-genre reading and worked on research and note-taking skills. We practiced them in the context of student-selected topics like George Washington, camouflage, and penguins. (Pictures to come soon!) My students worked in groups to research, so of course, I needed a group research rubric.

Click the link to grab your free copy!

I'm linking up with Manic Mondays at Classroom Freebies!
Goodnight, everyone!

P.S. I'm inching closer to 100 followers! And I've hit the 200 follower mark on TpT! That means a giveaway is coming!!!

Involving Parents in Home Reading

Several years ago, I found a wonderful post on Jessica Meacham's site about bags students could take home with books and other materials for sharing with families. I teach in a high-poverty area, and many of my students do not have books at home to share with their parents, siblings, and other relatives. Each kiddo takes home a book every night, but I wanted something a little extra that was a) motivating and that b) put a lot of books in my students' hands. This was the beginning of our literature bag program.

Since each pack includes many books (sometimes as many as seven or eight), my students have to get a parent's permission to check them out. In the four years I've used these, I've only had one pouch and one book lost! You can grab my permission slip (in English and Spanish) HERE.

After a couple months of school, I introduce my students to literature bags, which I display in an awesome book organizer I got through a DonorsChoose.org grant from Lakeshore.

Each one of my literature bags is in a School-to-Home Organizer from Lakeshore. (Again, I got these through a grant... Love DonorsChoose!)

I created cards to go into each School-to-Home Organizer, and numbered the pouches. Some of my bags have books that are in Spanish, and I've noted that with star stickers so my students know which ones have bilingual texts in them.

The pouch has two sides... One contains the books (which you can see when the organizer is closed), and the other contains the contents card and a thin composition book.

The contents card has a brief note to parents with a list of titles included in the pouch, so parents can check the contents before returning it to school. There are also a couple of writing prompts and suggested activities (which are basically the same for each literature pack... I also have math packs with similar cards and other ideas). Parents and students can write in the composition book and/or draw a picture. I don't require this (or participation in the literature bag program as a whole), but almost all of my kids and their parents participate.

These are just a few of the books in the Ocean Life pack. You'll see each is labeled with the literature bag number as well as my name and school.

My students L-O-V-E these packs, parents always have positive feedback about them, and best of all, it gets families reading together. What's not to love about that?!

Freebie labels!

Is anyone else OVERWHELMED with the year so far? I am! My room isn't quite how I want it to be yet, and I'm trying to get ahead (okay, who am I kidding? CATCH UP!) on planning and such. Our school day was extended this year, and while I'm LOVING the extra time, it's wearing me out a bit.

Anywhoooooo.....

Well, folks, these are probably superduper late for many of you, but maybe they'll be helpful for some of ya!

I've created six labels to label notebooks/folders for your kiddos, plus a bonus label for birthday books. (I give my students a book for their birthday. Many of my students don't have books at home, so I try to give my kiddos books for their birthdays, holidays, as rewards, etc.)

Click on the picture below to grab yours!

(Note: These can be printed on 4x3.33" labels. Make sure the page sizing is set to "none" so the labels print correctly.)

FREE Classroom library bin labels

Just a quick post to share my classroom library bin labels!

Last year I changed my book baskets to the large, clear bins from School Specialty (although Lakeshore and other stores carry similar ones), to better show the covers of some of my larger picture books. Therefore, I redid my labels to the ones you see in this post.

I printed and glued each label to black cardstock, then attached a colored sticker (I buy mine from Demco.com, which is a library supply store) with a number for each bin to the right side of the label. All the books that belong in that basket have the matching color/number sticker in the top corner. (I'll update this post later once I'm back in my classroom and can take some pictures of my book bins and books!) Fiction books have yellow stickers, series/author books have green stickers, nonfiction books have blue stickers, and chapter books have pink stickers. You can see my library organization below (I have this sign posted in the classroom library area):

Click {HERE} to download my library organization list.

My library bin labels are in two downloads due to size:

Click to download:
Library Book Bin Labels Set 1
Library Book Bin Labels Set 2

Enjoy!

Daily 5 for Firsties!

I've used Daily 5 in my first grade classroom for the past four and a half years, and I must say I absolutely LOVE how it really encourages independence among my kiddos. It takes quite a while to establish (usually about 5-6 weeks), but once it is up and running, it sustains itself. (Okay, so there's usually a few times a year - particularly after breaks - when we need to review expectations, but hey, that's to be expected with six and seven year olds!)

If you have not yet read The Daily 5 book, I would HIGHLY recommend it! It's a quick and easy read. I'll be posting some documents this summer to help with planning and implementing D5 in your classroom, including a guide to the first few weeks of school and corresponding books that work well to teach CAFE strategies (if you choose to integrate CAFE and D5).

Anywho, I thought I'd post a file you might find helpful - a Daily 5 choice recording sheet!

Click {HERE} to download!

Before each round of Daily 5, I call the kiddos to the rug, tell them which reading group I'm meeting with during that round (I use color groups - red group, orange group, etc.), and I quickly mark a "T" in the square for that round for the kids in my reading group (a T for TEACHER since I'm meeting with those students). I then alternate between starting at the top, middle, and bottom of the list of students. I list the students in alpha order by last name, so starting at different points in the list allows students the opportunity to have a chance to choose earlier in the selection process, increasing the likelihood they'll get their top choice.

It takes a bit of practice, but the students get VERY good at calling out their choice - I can typically get through the class of 30 students in less than two minutes. As I'm calling names and writing choices, I keep track mentally of how many listening students there are (since we have a limited number of computers and Tag Readers). I also track if we have an even or odd number of students doing Read to Someone. After I've called all students to pick their first choice, I call students who are doing Listening to move to their choice (this clears some kids off the rug and allows time for students to make sure they can log into the computer and get started before I start meeting with a reading group). Then I call all students who chose Read to Someone, then the remaining three choices. 

As I'm finishing my reading group, I clap to signal time to clean up that activity, we meet back at the rug, and we repeat making our D5 choices. I don't allow students to choose the same choice two days in a row, which means that every other day, students are doing ALL the choices. (This year, I only did two rounds, but next year, with a longer school day, I'll have the chance to take three groups and thus three rounds of D5. So my most proficient students, who I meet with less, will probably repeat one choice every other day. Not too bad.)

PHEW! Okay, that was an unnecessarily wordy explanation. I'll post more soon with more files, including the calendar/organizer for the first few weeks of school!

Making Mental Images

We just got back from a two week spring break. Phew! Getting back into the swing of things after a little R&R was a little hectic (probably more so for me than the students!). We started our poetry unit in Writing Workshop on Monday, so I decided to save our Mental Images unit in Reading Workshop to coincide with it. First up? We read "Green Giant" by Jack Prelutsky (a la One Extra Degree) and the kiddos drew their mental images. How cute are these?!