I am so excited to be teaming up with the #GuidedReadingGals for an amazing book study on The Next Step in Guided Reading!
If you have not grabbed a copy of the book yet, click here. Seriously guys, this book is amazing. It has totally changed my way of thinking and planning for Guided Reading Groups. I am actually so excited to get back to the classroom to implement these ideas. So grab the book, sit back, and check out our blog posts for the next few weeks as we go chapter through chapter talking and discussing.
Now onto Chapter 1, the set up and getting ready for Guided Reading. This is the most important part, the rules and procedures. Without devoting time to this, your classroom can fall apart and you will not be able to have a successful Guided Reading time. Now this part of the book I do differently only because I do not do traditional Literacy Workstations. Instead, we do Daily 5 in my Kindergarten classroom. I struggled with letting go control but once I finally did, I fell in love with Daily 5 and the students love the freedom of choosing how they learn.
I don’t want to get into Daily 5 too much in this post because I plan to blog later about just how I implement Daily 5 into my Kinder room. So for now, let’s do a quick overview that can be used with any literacy station rotation. Chapter 1 gives so many amazing suggestions for station ideas for the Primary Grades. Let me just talk about a few or we could seriously be here all day 🙂
Book Boxes – Now these are a must!!! Each student has their own book box and are responsible for selecting their own books for their book box. Now I do spend a lot of time at the beginning of the year talking about picking a “Good Fit” book and we practice this over and over before I let them go wild in my library. I’ll go into this more in my Daily 5 post. I number each of the boxes so I can reuse them each year. These are the boxes I use and I am going on year 3 and they are still holding up great! Click the picture to go to the website.
Buddy Reading/Reader’s Theater – I do this together. I think this is one of my kids favorite choices. I have purchased the Reader’s Theater packs from A Teeny Tiny Teacher. They are amazing and perfect for Reader’s Theater and Buddy Reading. There is a script for each student with their reading highlighted to help them with confusion. She has them for a ton of levels. Click here to see them. Sometimes we even dress up 🙂
Poetry – I add this element 2 years ago and love it!!! We do a different poem each week and activities to go with each. The kids even have an interactive poetry notebook that we use daily. They are able to go back and read previous poems and interact with our weekly poem during Daily 5 time. We use DeeDee’s poetry packs. They have everything you can imagine and are amazing. Click here to check them out.
ABC/Word Study – Each kid has their own sight word ring. Once they master the 4 new words, I add 4 more to the ring. This way each sight word ring is tailored to the specific student. I have a 10 drawer rolling cart with different activities each student can choose from to practice their words. Some of the activities are: building with magnets, rainbow write, bead lacing, write & decorate, stamp the words, and much more more. I try to change them out periodically to keep it fresh and new.
These are just a glimpse of some of the activities that my students are doing while I am in Guided Reading groups. I spend the first month practicing and reviewing the rules and procedures so that the students become independent learners and workers so that I can have a successful Guided Reading time with my small group. That is the most important thing. Teach your students how to work in Literacy Workstations independently so they are not interrupting your group time. I allow my students to choose their own activities and this helps to keep them engaged and excited about literacy time.
This was a quick peek at Chapter 1. Be sure to head over to The Literacy Spot to learn so much more about Chapter 1 and get some great information! Head over to the Facebook page for more in depth discussions.
