Guided Reading

Guided Reading has been another area of struggle for me. Luckily I feel a bit more confident in it than I do science. But there is SOOO much you can do during Guided Reading that it has been a bit overwhelming.

As a first year teacher you get a day to have a sub and go visit other teachers/campuses in district to observe. I went to visit another 3rd grade teacher at a school with similar students as mine. She was AWESOME!!! I learned so many awesome ideas that I could implement right away. I also had the previous Reading Intervention teacher at our school come in and model a lesson with my students. That was really exciting as well.

One of the things I have a hard time with is my struggling kiddos. I don't know the right tools to use to help them be successful. I learned a few things from watching the interventionist work with my kids. It also reminded me of a few things I had learned from my Cooperating Teacher during Student Teaching.

So after the first day of break, my sisters and I spent a few good hours working on some stuff or me to use with my readers who are still learning. I get all that digraph, blends, dipthong, etc. stuff confused. But here is what I came up with!

These are all words that have similar endings. My plan for these are just to give each kid one a day to read just to practice basic sight words.

Here are some digraph (I think) wheels. In the middle they have a beginning blend (sc, cl) or digraph (th, ch) and on the outside they have endings to the words. So as the kids move the wheel, they can read different words that all start the same. Yeah...pretty awesome idea!

Here are some other common words with different vowel patterns. You can't see it, but I (and by I, I mean my little sister) went over all the words in clear Elmer's glue. The kids will spell the word out while tracing each letter and then say the word at the end. This is for all those kinesthetic learners out there!

 Lastly, I bought some games that I thought would be good to do as a spiraling review either whole class or during one of my Daily 5 centers. Yay for fun new educational games!!! I get too excited about these things!!

What are some fun/cool things you use during your guided reading time???