Early in my teaching career, I realized the importance of small reading groups. I didn't really like having to follow the anthologies that were current at the time, because I found that they were varied in difficulty levels and that they created challenges for some children. In the late nineties, we were introduced to leveled books and guided reading that made more sense. Since that time, I have fed my book addiction in the pursuit of finding materials that would engage my students and help them to love books and do more than just read the words on the pages. (I left several boxes of book sets at the school when I retired. I was a huge fan of the book bundles from Scholastic and garage sales.) One of the challenges of doing guided reading, is being able to manage all the different reading levels in a classroom. I used to get parent volunteers and train them to work with my groups. I would give them the groups that were more capable and I would prepare the materials and structure the lessons for them. I would also have independent reading groups. I would work with the students that required more help. I would also have different center activities available for groups that I couldn't get to right away. There were so many different language activities available, it wasn't difficult to find ones to fit the various groups and abilities of my students. I created a rotation of activities so that I could keep track of which groups had done which activities. In recent years, I have not always been able to use parent volunteers, so I needed to come up with ways to manage up to 7 different reading groups during a day. It was a juggling act, but because I had been doing rotations and centers for so long, I was familiar with how to structure the groups and knew what kinds of materials and activities I would need to make it happen. I became pretty adept at creating centers and language activities that would engage the groups while I was working with others. I also started to add more and more language components to my guided reading lessons. The benefit of this was, the students got the lessons as they needed them and they were ready for them. Let's face it, not all kids are ready for the same concepts at the same time, so why teach them to the whole class at once! Of course, there are some things that can be taught to everyone at the same time, and perhaps should be, but most times, concepts aren't fully understood if the children aren't ready for them yet. I retired in June 2015, but I still volunteer at my last school. I have 6 different reading groups that I work with. Some groups are just learning to read, and others are advanced groups that are doing novel studies. One of the things I enjoy about working with these groups, is being able to select my own materials and plan language activities for them. I don't just help the children decode the material and then do minimal work with the book, I help them to dig deeper into the meaning or use the book to teach language usage as well. For example, I have a couple of groups of beginning readers working with speech bubbles and quotation marks. Normally, these ideas would not be introduced until much later, but the children are very excited about doing the activities and they are starting to notice the quotation marks in other books. I enjoy creating guided reading study materials for chapter books. Kids love it when they finally get to the books with chapters. However, they often don't read very deeply and miss much of the rich detail and information that is in the book. Creating activities that make them stop and think and find evidence in the story allows for a better understanding of what the author is sharing. Here are some guided reading studies for some of my students' favorite books and series. They are some of the books that I used with my groups last year and this fall. As the year goes on, I am sure that I will be creating more as I prepare for future groups and needs. I know that many teachers teach guided reading, and everyone has their own techniques for making it work. These are just some thoughts from my experiences. I have met many teachers who are masters of reading and they have shared many experiences and resources throughout the years. There are many others that I have met on the internet, that I have collaborated with. I am in awe of what they are doing in classrooms today. Children are lucky to have them as their teachers.
I would love to hear more about what you do for guided reading in your classrooms.
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I am joining other teachers in sharing Canadian books/resources this week. I chose to focus on Phoebe Gilman and her books.
Phoebe Gilman was born in the USA, but she moved to Canada as an adult and she taught art at the Ontario College of Art. She created her stories based on events in her life. She continued writing and illustrating children's books until she died in 2002. The picture above shows some of the books that she wrote and illustrated. These are my personal copies. My students loved the stories about Jillian Jiggs and her imaginative actions and adventures. They also enjoyed the story Something From Nothing and how Gilman added the story of the mice to the main story through her illustrations. Another thing that she did was add illustrations from her previous books into each new book she wrote.
A few years ago, Scholastic put out a VHS called Meet Phoebe Gilman. I still have a copy of the tape. On the tape she reads the two books above and then she talks about how she came up with the ideas for her books. She also shows how she created her books. I wish it was still available for you to see.
I have chosen the book The Wonderful Pigs of Jillian Jiggs to focus on. It is a delightful story about a little girl who has a big imagination. She often gets so caught up in creating stories and adventures that she gets messy. Her mother says her room looks like it has been lived in by pigs.
In this story, Jillian finds a jar of buttons while cleaning up her room and the buttons remind her of pig noses. This gets her imagination going and she decides to make pigs. Check out the book to see some of the delightful pigs she makes and what happens when she decides to sell them. I created this product to accompany the book The Wonderful Pigs of Jillian Jiggs. Click on the image to get a copy. I hope you get a chance to check out some of her books. I think you will enjoy them.
As children begin to read, it is important that they move from decoding and just reading words to reading for meaning. Often when asked to read silently, I have noticed that they read the words but they do not pay much attention to the details.
Case in point: I am working with a reading group that has been reading some of the Horrible Harry books. One time when I was away, I left instructions for them to read through the next couple of chapters. When I returned the next day, I asked them to tell me about what they had read. I also asked them some questions about details and events in the chapters. It was interesting to see that they could tell me very little about what they had read. I decided that we needed to do more directed reading to change this. I created some questions and activities for the chapters and thus began my guided reading novel studies. I have since created several different guides. These have been very helpful as discussion activities and they have helped the children look for different features while reading.
As you can see, once I got going it was hard to stop. I have started working on some more, but I haven't got them ready for publishing yet. It makes me think I should start a growing bundle.
I started thinking that I could do the same for other books as well. A friend of mine was working with a group that was ready for early chapter books, so I created study guides for the Frog and Toad series for her. These were a hit with her group.
Now I am working on another couple of popular books for grade 2. I hope to have a companion activity that compares the 2 books ready later on this year.
I still wanted the children to search more deeply for information, so I also created Finding Evidence.
This helps them to focus on specific questions as they read through the book and they need to write down the evidence that shows where they found their answers.
This is a sample of how it can be used with a chapter or small book as well. Another teacher created this set of questions for a guided reading book she was using with her students.
Here is a copy for you to try out. Just right click the image below and give it a try.
As you can see, I got caught and I can't seem to stop thinking about creating materials to help students to better understand and appreciate what they are reading about. I hope you find some of these materials helpful. If you have other popular books that you would like to see guided reading study guides for, I'd love to hear about them in the comments below.
I am enjoying my time volunteering at the school I just retired from. I go in 3 mornings a week to work with kids. I have 2 guided reading groups and I help out another teacher with her writing lessons. This has motivated me to continue to create several literacy products. Here are 3 of my newest ones.
This is a set of 3 game boards for practicing letter sounds. The key here is to follow the arrows and not get sent back. The kids love the game aspect and they are getting better at recognizing their letters and sounds as a result. This one actually uses an old rap that a colleague of mine has used for years with her beginning readers. She doesn't know where she got it originally, but I have updated it and added some cute graphics. I printed out a set for her. Her students were excited to have color copies to use. Get your free copy by clicking on the image. This is a large set of different task cards that work on word families for the short and long vowels, compound words, opposites, contractions, and homophones. There are many ways to use these cards, but I find memory type games seem to be the most popular.
If you are interested in seeing any of my other literacy products, check out my store and click on the custom category Literacy Activities.
It is fun to see the children getting engaged in language and the excitement on their faces when they realize that they are reading. I love being able to teach just because without the added politics. I look forward to sharing some of the other things we do throughout the year.
Today I am back for another segment for the Diggin' Into Next Year.
Organize Literacy Blocks
I combine my reading and writing components so that the literacy block can go from the beginning of the day, following morning start up activities, until the recess break. This gives me about 75 minutes without interruption each morning. Some days I will be able to extend the time a bit after the recess break, but often other things such as gym, music, or library are scheduled in during the recess to lunch block. For this post, I will be focusing on guided reading and how I make it work. In our school, we try to do guided reading groups across the primary grades. During the last couple of years, several of the primary teachers have gotten together and grouped their students by levels and then each teacher has taken on a group for a daily guided reading block that has been dedicated on the timetable. Other adults have also been included so that the groups can be small enough to work well, especially with the struggling readers. These could be administrators, the librarian, educational assistants, and some parents or retired teachers. Since we are usually short of adults, myself and one other teacher have opted out of this and done our own reading groups. This has helped to keep the numbers manageable, but it has also required some creative planning in order to make it work well in our classrooms. My colleague has had a couple of volunteers come in to help. She trained them a few years ago and she can count on them to follow her guidelines. (Unfortunately, she is retiring, so this will change next year.) I have found that it works better for me to do my own groups and tailor the lessons specifically for them. It takes some management, but it has worked effectively for me. First of all, it is important to figure out what the appropriate reading level is for all of my students. I choose a few books that are in my leveled boxes and I have my students read to me one by one while others are working at their desks on an independent writing activity. Once I have a starting place for each child, I put together groups of children that are reading at similar levels and I create book bins for them to use during reading times. I also have 3 book shelves full of books for recreational or free reading times. These are the books they read when it is not time for guided reading groups. After the groups are determined, the organization of the literacy block can be prepared. The number of groups is determined by the levels created for the guided reading component. Sometimes I can have as many as 7 different reading groups going on in order to best meet the needs of the class. This can be tricky to organize and make work. I try to get to all of my groups during the literacy block, but I only get to do actual guided reading lessons with about 3-4 groups each day. I make sure that I work with my struggling readers every day. The other groups need to alternate days. I select book series for my guided reading so that I can capture the interest of the kids and then send them on to related books. This helps keep them reading while I work with other kids. Once they are reading beginning chapter books, this is easier to do because there are so many series available that are geared towards this age level. Some of my favorite go to series are: The Magic Tree House, Bailey City School Kids, Horrible Harry, Pony Pals, The Littles, Amelia Bedelia, Ready Freddy, Cam Jansen, Jigsaw Jones. You can read about my Amelia Bedelia post here.
I also have written activities and games or task cards available for the groups that are not working with me. Sometimes they will work on them independently, and sometimes in small groups. I train my kids to work quietly during guided reading time so that I can hear those that I am working with. They learn quickly, that they need to be able to work quietly if they want to be working with others.
Reading with a partner is also a great way to support struggling readers. I often pair up either a struggling reader with someone who is stronger and able to guide them through the book, or I will pair up people in the same group to work on a book together. In this picture, the 2 boys are in the same level, and they are supporting each other as they read through a choice book.
Another tool I use is the computer. I collected iMacs as the different computer labs undated their machines, and I have enough computers for everyone to use. I have them loaded with math and language games, so during our literacy block, sometimes I assign different language games for them to work on. This is usually just for one group at a time, as it gets noisy otherwise.
I have also used Reading A-Z (Raz Kids) for individuals and also pairs when necessary. This allows me to tailor specific books and levels for certain students.
I may need to have some of my students join the others if we do a mixed grouping with all the classes next year. If I have too many students who are struggling readers, and also not very independent, it is difficult to manage the groups and effectively teach at the same time. There are many students that will require extra support coming into my grade level next year, so I will have to wait to determine how I will make it work.
I used to have a rotation schedule for groups and activities, but I have found that I don't usually need this as I have done it for so long that I know the rotation. However, I may start creating a written schedule again so that it will be easier for another teacher to follow if I am away. It will save writing it out each time with my sub plans.
I will continue to get a starting point level for each of my students when the year begins. I will also begin some guided reading groups as soon as possible during the year. Even if I have some students join the other groups, I need to do this because whole school guided reading doesn't begin until later in the fall. I can't wait that long to get them going.
I use the Dolch sight words for many different activities in my classroom. My kids never get tired of them. I have created different themes to use at different times of the year. Here are some of the ones available at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.
Task cards and written activities are also important mainstays during guided reading. A quick lesson can be given at the beginning of the session, and then the activities can be started and groups can be pulled away when it is time for them to do guided reading. (This is a student writing sample based on a quick story about all the ice storms back east last winter. The template can be found here.)
Well, there you have it. I hope there is something here that can be helpful for others.
I am super excited to be a part of Booking Across Canada. This is such a great country and I love having a chance to share a part of it with others. Click on the button above to check out posts from different provinces and territories of this great land.
The book I would like to share is called S is for Spirit Bear. It is a book about British Columbia that is written in an alphabet format. It is part of a series from Sleeping Bear Press.
I was introduced to the series when my class received a gift from my cousins in Manitoba as part of our flat family project. They sent us G is for Golden Boy with a message in the cover for my class. I really liked the format and went on a search to see what other books were available. I found S is for Spirit Bear in the library and quickly signed it out for my class to see. It fit in perfectly with our study of Canada and the province we live in. I knew I had to have a copy of it for myself. I also got copies of the other provinces. There are now books available for all ten provinces. I hope that one day there will be books for the three territories as well.
The book format works well for young children who have just learned their alphabet. It helps them to see how different ideas or events match the letters of the alphabet. It has realistic illustrations that capture the attention of the readers and it has more detailed information along the sidebars for those who want to learn more about the people or events chosen. I shared this book with my five year old grandson and he told me what the next letter would be and he helped me to think about what activities would go well with different pages. Here are a few examples. Click on the activity images to download them.
This is just a small sampling of what this book has to offer. If you get a chance to look at it, you will also learn about some of the other important features and people of our province. Don't forget to check out the books on the other provinces as well. I just put the finishing touches on my activity booklet to go with each of the letters of the alphabet. It is now in my TpT store if you would like to get a copy. It will be on sale for 50% off for this week to allow those visiting the Booking Across Canada blogs a chance to get it for a reduced price. Click here to see it.
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About Me Charlene Sequeira
I am a wife, mother of 4, grandmother of 9, and a retired primary and music teacher. I love working with kids and continue to volunteer at school and teach ukulele. Categories
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