Guided Reading with Chapter Books!

For the past couple of years, I have been a little unsure about using chapter books during my guided reading intervention groups. I was nervous about the interruptions and breaking up the book too much, and I was also worried about being limited in which skills I could teach.

Now that I look back on it, I have no idea why I was so worried! Chapter books were just what my intervention groups needed! I picked two really great books from my grant this fall. My level L group read Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot vs. The Uranium Unicorns from Uranus. This is a science fiction/graphic novel that my students were obsessed with. My level M group read Oh No! It's Robert! which has a great mystery that my students did not see coming at all!

Students used this graphic organizer to analyze the characters.

Using chapter books has given my students wonderful opportunities for cumulative review. We were able to practice several different skills at once. Choosing rich, complicated texts is key, though. These two chapter books had complex characters that provided several opportunities for meaningful analysis. The books also had interesting plots with problems, solutions, humor, and fantastic illustrations. 

Students used their reader's notebooks to keep track of problem and solutions encountered throughout the story, as well as cause and effect relationships.

We also continued to work on our written response questions. The chapter books gave us so many more opportunities for deep, meaningful questions! My students are getting better with the RACE strategy as well!

Keeping track of all the vocabulary, comprehension questions, skills, etc. can be complicated in these long chapter books. So...I made my own template! I am all about templates! Click on the image above for your own copy of the template!

At first my students were very nervous about reading the chapter books. Some of them even said they couldn't! Most students said they ended up loving the chapter books. They couldn't wait to read what happened next!

What are some of your favorite chapter books to use in guided reading?

Quit Sounding Out!

I don't know about your students, but my little first graders are addicted to sounding out. Fundations is a beautiful thing, but it can become very tedious when students try to "tap out" every single word in the book. I am working very hard to get my students to use other word attack strategies. I made the anchor chart above to help remind my first graders of their strategies. The pictures and colors help all my students, but especially my ELL students.

1. Look at the picture

2. What would make sense?

3. Look at the beginning letter.

4. Skip it, and then go back.

5. Look for chunks you know.

It usually isn't too difficult to get students to use the picture and the beginning letter. Occasionally students forget to match the beginning letter with the picture. We do a lot of activities match new vocabulary words to pictures on the SMARTboard to practice thinking about the beginning letter. The more advanced the books become, the better able students are able to use chunks. The words in the C-D level books are not really made up of too many parts. We do start to think about digraphs, though.

I find the most powerful strategies to be skipping then going back and thinking what makes sense. These are often the most difficult to get students to use. Students are often reluctant to skip words, thinking they aren't "allowed to do that." Once they finally get the hang of it, this is often students' favorite strategy. 

To get students to understand how to use these strategies, we do plenty of guided reading with lots of time spent whisper reading. Most importantly, I explicitly model how I think aloud when I problem solve during reading. With each book, I will pretend I don't know a word. Then, we will use our anchor chart to select strategies for me to try. During this modeling, I love using the document camera and SMARTboard.

I am sure plenty of you are familiar with Reading A-Z. They have awesome projectable books for the SMARTboard. You can use a variety of tools to markup the text right there on the board for students. This is also a powerful way preview vocabulary during picture walks. Again, giving students the chance to work on matching beginning letters with what makes sense.

If you would like a copy of the anchor chart, please click the link here. It works well printed as an anchor chart or displayed on a SMARTboard. Enjoy!

What are your students favorite word attack strategies?

How Do You Get Them Ready to Read?

Now that I am finally finishing up testing and rejoining the world of teaching, I wanted to share how to start off the year with those little kindergarteners before you jump into full blown reading. There are many foundational skills that lay the groundwork for reading later in the year. These ideas can be done whole group, but I use them in my small group guided reading.

First and foremost, it is crucial that students have an understanding of their letters and sounds before they can become successful readers. Since my district uses Fundations, I made a set of matching cards to review letters and sounds with my students. I believe consistency is key. As the year goes on, I slowly wean the students away from the keywords on the cards. At the beginning of the year, the keywords are very helpful as a bridge between the letters and their sounds.

I try to add a tactile component by having students write their letters in paint. (sealed in a ziploc - I am doing this in someone else's classroom after all!) I might tell them the letter name or give them the sound and have them determine the corresponding letter. This is a popular activity with my students.

It is also important that students begin to develop a strong phonological awareness. We practice separate words spoken orally into phonemes. I use magnetic boards as elkonin boxes. In the future, students will use this skill in writing and also the reverse for sounding out words. 

Before students begin reading, they need to understand the difference between letters and words. One word students will definitely need to know is their name. Hopefully many already know the letters in their name. We practice putting the letters together to make this special word. We also discuss capital letters.

Shared reading is crucial in kindergarten. We use this activity to go over the concepts of print. We circle words and letters, underline sight words, discuss punctuation, practice one-to-one correspondence, and work on correct phrasing. I use a magic wand because it is cheaper than a teacher pointer and still gets the job done. At first, I do a lot of modeling, but then students begin leading the activity. As we practice through choral reading, students begin to identify many words through repetition.

I also use interactive writing with my students. We write a sentence (often related to the shared reading) together on a sentence strip. As we write, we talk about capital letters, punctuation, spacing between words, and other concepts of print. Then, I cut the sentence up. We put the sentence back together as a group and continue to review these concepts of print.

These are all great activities to get your students ready to read. It is important to have a strong foundation for success in the future! 

How do you get your students ready to read?

Kindergarten Guided Reading

Today I just wanted to share a little bit about what guided reading with my kindergarteners looks like. Over my years teaching, I have learned that guided reading is so different at the different levels. The needs of students change drastically as they progress through the reading levels and become more proficient readers. Here is how I plan my guided reading for my little guys:

1. Book Selection

The right book is crucial. I try to use an equal combination of fiction and nonfiction texts in my lessons. I love when I can tie in other subject areas with nonfiction. On the other hand, fiction let's you cover a great deal of skills, such as theme, story elements, etc. I have students work with the text for two days. The first day students are able to focus on using their word attack and comprehension strategies. The second day gives students a chance to work on fluency and dig deeper into the comprehension.

2. Vocabulary

During my picture walks, I like to highlight certain vocabulary words. I try not to preteach too many words, though. It is a delicate balance. After students have read the book, I like to continue to review new vocabulary words. We focus on using the beginning letters/sounds and looking for chunks we know.

3. Cut-Up Sentence

I love using cut-up sentences with my kindergarteners. It allows them to focus on the syntax of the sentence, including capital letters and punctuations. It is great review for sight words and new vocabulary. I choose sentences from the text we are reading. I find that these sentences allow students to work on their word attack strategies in a smaller, more focused context.

4. Writing

I always include a writing activity in my guided reading lessons. The writing goes along with the text and incorporates sight words and new vocabulary words. Students frequently are making connections through the writing portion of the lesson. The reciprocal nature of reading and writing benefits students greatly.

Tell me about your guided reading lessons, primary or higher!

Word Attack Strategies!

When I work with my students during guided reading, I really focus on helping them develop good "word attack" strategies. I keep this anchor chart up for them to refer to. When they are stuck on a word, I always ask,"What strategy are you going to try?" Sometimes it takes more than one, but usually the strategies get the job done! After reading together, we even added another one (after I took this picture). The fifth one is: Look for chunks you know. This has actually ended up being one of the most popular ones! So here is a quick list of the strategies we use:

1. Look at the picture.

2. What would make sense?

3. Look at the beginning letter.

4. Skip it, read to the end of the sentence, then go back.

5. Look for chunks you know.

I use these strategies with all the grade levels I work with. I have really been pushing the strategies with my third graders. They wanted to sound out every word! I told them now that we were reading harder books, the words were getting too long to sound out. My third graders are also still working on learning several phonics rules, so their sounding out often was not successful. To break them of this "sounding out habit," I made a checklist.

I made a small list of the strategies for each student to have in front of them. I laminated the strategies so that students could check off the strategies with a dry erase marker as they used them. It has been a huge success! I am so pleased! My students are really starting to use these strategies instead of sounding out. I find it very interesting how certain students favor different strategies. Some students prefer to use a couple of the strategies over and over, whereas other students like to use every single one in a book. Differentiation at its finest, right?!

If you would like a copy of the strategies, click here, or on the picture above. I hope your students find them as useful as mine do!

What word attack strategies do you use with your students?