Check out these science of reading centers ideas to help give your kinder and first grade readers authentic practice during literacy centers.
Structured Literacy is an approach to reading instruction that is explicit and systematic, with a focus on the structure of the English language.
Hello friends! What an important time of the day guided reading is! It can be a difficult time to plan for, but it is so important to get our new readers reading out loud and reading with a purpose. Before you start your guided reading time, it also important to have an instructional focus selected. During guided reading your focuses may include: a comprehension skill, vocabulary words, and word work. One thing I am guilty of neglecting to teach is decoding strategies. Decoding strategies are important tools that allow students to take some kind of action when they come to an unfamiliar word. Sometimes students come to an unfamiliar word and are just "stuck." Most often, it's our struggling readers that don't use strategies. In order to help students grow as readers, we need to teach them strategies! My favorite way to start off guided reading, is by choosing a strategy to focus on. The strategy that you choose, may depend on the text you are reading. If the story you are reading has high frequency sight words, a predictable pattern, and lots of picture clues, you may want to focus on the eagle eye strategy. If your story has a lot of words with vowel teams, digraphs, or another phonetic concept, you may want to focus on chunky monkey. As the teacher, you're the expert on what your students need! :) All of the strategies are helpful so you really can't go wrong! We typically spend about 5-8 minutes working on the strategies before we begin reading. The time you spend working on them may depend on your group's grade level and how long they can focus. Before you start using your strategies, you need to get the cards organized! I store my cards in the Recollections Color Photo & Craft Keeper! Click the photo to grab the storage container! If you don't want to purchase the craft keeper, you can always hole punch them and store them on rings! Before my students start reading, I show them the strategy we are focusing on as an "I can" statement" I explain to them what they will do and how to use the strategy. I attached this to the bottom of the lid of my craft box. Once I have chosen my strategy, I pass out the task cards to students. There are several different levels to each so be sure to choose the phonetic concept your students need practice on. Choose the level that is right for your students! A little about each strategy... You may wondering how each strategy works. Check out each strategy below or check out the video to see them in action! Stretchy Snake Have the student tap each dot and say the letter/letters sound. They can drag their finger across the arrow to blend the word. Lips the Fish Have the student say the first sound of the word. Then, they can slide their finger to say the rest of the word. They can read the word altogether at the bottom. Flippy Dolphin I’ve included a quick “warm up” where students will quickly tap the dots and read the short and long vowel sounds. Have the student read the word using both the short and long vowel sound. They can decide which vowel sound makes sense and matches the picture. They will then use a dry erase marker to circle the answer, long or short. It will be pretty easy for students to read the word since it matches the picture but it really gets them thinking about short and long vowel sounds! Chunky Monkey Give the child a dry erase marker and have them circle familiar “chunks” or parts of the word that they know. I have organized the cards by short, long, and irregular vowels. Many of the words will be longer since it is easier to use these strategy on longer words with more “chunks.” Skippy Frog Cut out the frogs (included) and glue them on popsicle sticks. Have students cover up the end or entire underlined word when reading the sentence. After they have read the sentence, they will uncover the word and reread the entire sentence to decode the underlined word. Students may be able to solve the word using the context of the sentence or, if needed, they can use previously learned strategies. Tryin' Lion First, students will read the sentence. Then, they will read both word choices and decide which word makes sense. They will circle the word with a dry erase marker. Eagle Eye Students will read the sentence and use the picture clue to read the underlined word or words. I hope this was helpful! If you'd like to get these cards you can purchase them at my shop by clicking here! What strategies do you use in your classroom? Leave me a comment below! Happy Teaching! **** Want to come back to this blog post? Pin the image below! Glitter and Glue 4 K-2 is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com
Each set has six packs that cover the following sounds:ALPHABETSHORT VOWELSDIGRAPHSBLENDSLONG VOWELSDIPHTHONGS
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When I started at my new school last year, I came into a new reading program. I was used to doing almost all of my reading instruction WHOLE CLASS, but my school uses a guided reading model all the way up to 5th grade. I definitely had to rethink my reading block! I had done centers in the past, but wanted a really clear way to maximize the time and make the transitions clear for the students. Here's how I do my guided reading block! ROTATIONS We have Guided Reading/Centers Monday-Thursday from about 1:10-2:00 and I rotate through four groups. This means each center is 12 minutes long, with about 30 seconds for a transition. 12 minutes can fly by, so the students have to work on getting those transitions DOWN. I found a FANTASTIC resource by my friend Kristen of Chalk & Apples, and it has made centers SO easy. There are tons of different icons that can be easily swapped out on different days or weeks. I change mine up all the time! In a typical week, I do guided reading with leveled passages on Monday and Wednesday, and we do literature circles on Tuesdays and Thursdays. GROUPS My students are grouped according to DRA levels, because that is what my school uses. You might use AR, Lexile, or another measure. I have four groups: Low, Low-Mid, High-Mid, and High. Each group has a number, but I assign the number randomly so it doesn't match up to skill level in any way. I have 24 students in my class this year, so there will be 6 kids in each group. If you have a larger class, you can still make it work by having your higher groups work on their own while you work with a lower group and just check in! GUIDED READING I LOVE this close reading resource from Fifth in the Middle. I bought the entire bundle so I have TONS of options. Each reading comes in four reading levels, but they are on the same topic and look the same so students don't notice. There is also a paired text that I try to use for morning work toward the end of the week. There are several pages of activities for each passage, and I often have the students start these at the table with me after we've read the passage out loud. When it is their turn for guided reading, the students come to me at our back table with a pencil and a highlighter. I give them their sheets for that day and discuss what we will be looking for while we read (unfamiliar words usually) and we begin reading. I like to make sure each child reads, so however I have to break it up to make that happen. After reading through, I ask them to scan through again to find specific information. This changes week to week, so one time it might be looking for transition phrases, and another it might be looking for dates to create a timeline. Then, we talk about what everyone found and work on putting together the information on the worksheet. I, of course, provide a lot more scaffolding and support to my lower readers, while my high readers are able to do the activity on their own. LIT CIRCLES On the days that we have literature circles, the students still come to the back table with me, but this time they bring their lit circle book (which varies) and their lit circle binder. In their binder, they keep all of their jobs and their reading schedule. I have used about a GAZILLION resources for lit circles (including online blogs), but this one from Pocketful of Primary is my absolute FAVORITE: It is SOO easy to adapt to groups of different sizes and I found it very user-friendly for both the kiddos and for myself! I organize the jobs using a hanging file I found on Amazon. You can find it here: THE OTHER CENTERS So what do the kiddos do during their other blocks of time? Here's some options I cycle through: STAPLES: Partner Reading Each student has a partner from their reading group that they meet up with for this activity. I typically use "I Survived" books or similar short chapter books. I stock up through Scholastic! I have 6 shared books for the entire class, and I place a sheet inside the front cover so the students can write their names and where they ended each day they read. I always have new books ready to go for the students who finish. I do this strictly for fluency, so I don't do quizzes or worksheets. Silent Reading (KBAR) In my class, we call silent reading KBAR- Kick Back and Read. When we do a whole class KBAR, I sometimes take it outside. Spelling (Spelling City) I typically use Spelling City for centers, but sometimes do a worksheet instead. Vocabulary (Quizlet)Quizlet is AMAZING. I love using this for vocabulary! The students really enjoy it as well. Keyboarding (KWT) This is a tough one since monitoring the students' finger placement is so important. I don't do this OFTEN as a center, but throw it in now and again. Writing If we are working on a longer project (such as the state report), I have the students use this chunk of time for that. Otherwise, I sometimes provide a prompt or allow them to free write. Here's one of the resources I use: NoRedInk If you've never used this site, CHECK IT OUT! It's one of the best ways to get some extra grammar practice into your day! Be aware that the initial set up takes a bit of time because the students have to select a bunch of their favorites from different categories: books, tv shows, movies. What's neat is the site uses their preferences and their name + their friends' names when building the practice sentences. The kids get a kick out of it! Task Cards (small group) Students work with their reading group and record their answers on individual answer sheets. I have a huge selection of task cards that I keep in one of these bad boys from Michael's: Cursive (Can Do) I love that my school teaches cursive, but in fifth grade, we don't have a lot of specific time for it. To keep the kid's practicing, I assign pages from our cursive book during centers. Reading Comprehension (Reading Plus) We use Reading Plus, but there are many online reading comprehension sites. Use whatever your district provides or what works for your class! Games I will occasionally throw in a review game for the kids to play with their small group. The key is they have to be short and not too loud! Comment below if you have other questions or want to add some advice on running smooth ELA centers with Guided Reading!
Learn how to teach and plan effective math mini-lessons during your guided math workshop in the Kindergarten, first grade, and second grade classroom. Read this elementary teachers' guide for tips and ideas of what to include and not include, as well as the benefits for your math instruction. Grab your free printable list of whole group math mini-lessons for Kinder, 1st grade, and 2nd grade for all of the math standards.
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It amazes me how much class size affects my teaching and my students. I started the year with 31 students. I just lost my second one at the beginning of this week, so I'm down to 29. I've had 2 kids out all week on long vacations and 2 more out sick. So I've had a class of 25 ALL week!! It's been a big difference. Even though the ones gone are little angels and I still have all the hard ones, it really makes a BIG difference!! Our district and researchers keep telling us that class size doesn't make a difference but I have to beg to differ with them. It makes a HUGE difference in first grade. With a smaller class I can spread myself out more- work with more kids, more often, for longer periods of time. We can get more done- 25 kids take less time to finish an assignment than 31. With all the activities we do in first grade through out the day it can really add up. With less kids, fighting for my attention, I can give more attention to those that really need it. During class discussions, there is more participation by more kids. The shyer kids start to open up. It just feels more like a close knit community rather than a big city. I can hardly imagine what it would be like to teach less than 20. What a dream!! Back to reality. Our school has been doing training in SIOP this year. It stands for Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol. You can find out more HERE. It actually is training in teaching English Language Learner but our school does not have a very high percentage of ELLs. We actually have only 3 out of 180 in our grade level. But the SIOP model is really best practices and a great review in how to teach better. With the new common core our principal thought is would be a great help. We've had to do lesson studies and just finished one yesterday. Our team did ours on Synonyms. It's great to collaborate and work together as a team developing and analyzing a lesson. Here's a practice page we used and a cute song we found. I don't know who to give credit for the song but our kiddos really liked it. Click HERE if you'd like to grab a copy. Hey, believe it or not but it's FRIDAY tomorrow- again! Gotta love FRIDAY! I hope you all have a GREAT one.
Jen Follow me on Facebook Join me on Instagram {@jenbengel5} See what’s new on Pinterest To see more literacy support visit jenbengel.com
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I'd like to talk about my favorite time of the day (okay, it's tied with word study rotations and play centers, but those are for another time). Our 30-minute block of math rotations has allowed me to become a stronger math teacher and my students to become more confident mathematicians. How could 30 minutes be
