Guided Reading

Just wanted to let you all see what we've been doing during our Guided Reading time in the mornings. How it works is there are five groups. Every group has a captain. The captain is the one "in charge" of the group- they get the materials, help keep the group on task, etc...Each group rotates to three different stations in a day (lasting for 15 minutes). Then the next day, all the groups switch and do three new stations. They have new rotations for five days. I plan on keeping the same rotations for 2 weeks and then switching them out for new ones. So every group goes to all the rotations twice for 30 minutes total.

Here is the work board. Every group is a certain shape. They know which rotations they do for the day based on the three labels they have under their shape. 

The rotation baskets. The captains of the groups grab the basket with the matching label and do the activity in the basket.

I also started a "scoreboard" for our guided reading time. I forgot to get a picture of it though, I'll have to post one on Monday! There are four points: a noise point, an interruption point, a clean up point, and an on-task point. The scoreboard is the teacher against the students. At the end of our guided reading time, we'll decide who should get each point. They know that if they get all four points for the day, I will give them one big point on the dry erase board in the classroom. Then when they get 5 points on the board, they all get a surprise!

The kids are really starting to get the hang of how things should be done. They are doing an excellent job of working well with each other and getting their work done! This was the first week that we had all three rotations in one day. We started out with just one for a week, then went up to two for another week, and started this week with all three!

 Here are examples of some of our rotations:

              Reading on the computer             "Write the Room"

Word Detective Game

Finding and writing rhyming matches

           Making letters out of Playdoh            "Read, Write, Stamp"

               Creating 3-letter words           Making a sight word monster

Looking for and writing sight words

               
 This is where I pull kids over to do reading in small groups. I call a group of students over (usually based on ability) before a rotation begins and they will sit with me and read a book for that whole rotation. Then I'll call a new group over for the next rotation. We've been reading some leveled readers and working on our sight words. This is also why I want to start an "I Can Read" Folder- so that they can put the books that we read during this time in the folder and read them throughout the week. 

So this is what our mornings look like now! It's been fun and the kids really are doing a great job! I am just so proud of how much they are learning and how hard they are working!

Please let me know if you have any questions about anything. Enjoy your weekend!

Mrs. Ray