Personal Reading Menus

During Guided Reading my students are reading.  They are either reading to themselves or reading with a partner.  I'm not one of those center type of teachers.  I hate making or buying things for centers only to have students lose a piece and then it's pretty much no good anymore. 

I still might have students work on vocabulary (work on words if you are a Daily 5 person), Word Work, or writing but that is usually something they do on their own as morning work and finish to start off guided reading if needed.  Once students finish that then they read.  For me students do not get enough time reading.  As much as I try to encourage reading at home students never seem to read enough.  So I have my students reading whenever possible. 

The last two years I had a FACE of a reader bulletin board, but if you read below I will be changing my bulletin board up a bit this coming year.  (Still working on the details.) So I will be looking to incorporating ideas from both.  I think all good teachers take a little bit away from every book or blog post that we read, workshop we go to and make it our own so that it works for our group of students.  Well anyway since I'm celebrating my blogs birthday I thought I would give away another freebie.  You can click on the image below to download my personal reading menu in google docs. 

You can arrange the sheets to spell either CAFE or FACE. Each one of my students has this in their book baskets. They bring them with when we meet for small group instruction.  This way it helps students keep track of what strategies they have been taught and are responsible for when they read. 

Don't forget to enter my It's My Birthday Giveaway!

Winner will be announced 1st thing Monday morning.



Work on Writing/Word Work

I have had several emails requesting that I post my I-charts for Work on Writing, Word Work, and Listening to Reading.

I have Work on Writing/Word Work complete and hope to have the Listen to reading finished soon. 

Coming Soon

Parent Teacher Conference Information

Walk and Talk

This past week I introduced "Walk N Talk" as part of my Read to Someone Activities. I got this idea from a workshop I attended last year.  I adapted the idea to make it my own.   Once a pair of students is finished reading they can pick an activity to dicuss what they have just read.  This helps students be more accountable when listening to each other read.

For this activity I have the students lay the cards on the floor. (I have them numbered on the back so they are in correct retelling order.)  Each student reads the prompt on the card (question) and answers the question.  There is a sentence starter to help students answer the question in a complete sentence.

(Hmm, I thought I had the picture going up and down.  Oh, well.)

I have created these for both fiction and non-fiction.  So far my students have enjoyed this activity.  It gets them up and moving.  A break form reading but they are still on task discussing their book.  I just love it when they have a good book discussion.

 These are available for purchase at The Teaching Oasis- click on the picture of above. (It's under reading strategies.)  I was also thinking of creating these in a bookmark style as well.  If that is something you would be interested in please leave a comment below.

Daily 5

Just finished our 2nd week of school.  On the first day of school we started building our stamina for Read to Self.  This past week we started Read to Someone.  Both are going well.  With limited wall space in my classroom.  It's hard to find places for all of the anchor charts we create.  I first write student responses for the anchor charts on chart paper.  Then I type them up into a smaller poster and/or we add them to our reading workshop folders for reference.

Here are the anchor charts for Read to Self and Read to Someone.

 and EEKK

Well I see that I'm close to another giveaway time (200 followers).  So I will be working on that this week.  Stayed tuned for more freebies and giveaway time.

Stamina Graphs

When I first started teaching centers and even when I moved to a guided reading approach my biggest issue was student stamina.  Starting off the first day of school building reading stamina and charting our progress was a huge success. 

My 2nd graders were very eager to see the bars on the graph increase.  When student stamina increased significantly I start bragging to other teachers, the principal etc.  Students love it when you brag about them about their progress.  Students even love to use the word "stamina". 

Some tips: I usually start at 3 min. but this will vary depending on your class and grade.  If I see that students might be able to go another minute or two on the first day I let them read longer.  The goal is to have students feel success right from the very beginning, especially those students who haven't had tons of success in the past.  This gives students motivation to go even further on the next attempt. 

For the most part I do take things slowly. If I have students getting up or start talking I stop.  I am very strict at the beginning of the year with this because I want students to reap the rewards later.

Here are the stamina graphs that I use.

Reading Workshop

Looking for ideas to start your reading workshop?  Here are some mini-lessons to get you started.

Looking for more Reading Workshop Ideas check out The Teaching Oasis.  We have great resources for author and genre studies, reading skills/strategies, reading logs, and much more.  So be sure to check us out!