I have never been completely comfortable with teaching reading—which is weird, because I always enjoyed it more than math. (Ironically, I love teaching math.) At the beginning of last year, small group reading was my arch nemesis. I got the general idea and the purpose for small group time, but I don't think I ever got the timing and pacing down right. It truly is a science to take 12 minutes and chock them full of meaningful content and reading skills. I had all of last year to practice on my kindergartners and we finally found a routine that worked for us. I owe a lot of our routine to all of the small group videos available on the MCPS website. They were extremely helpful.
This year I've been thrown a curveball-- thy name is third grade.
Yes, I know third graders have small group too, and the general idea is the same—but there's far more variety in the reading material. Third graders read novels! I've already been given the advice to plan out the full novel before we begin so that I'll have a framework to work within. It's kind of scary, and my respect for my grade school teachers grows exponentially every time I think about all the planning and executing that went on in my classrooms.
Whole group reading will work a little differently as well. For several of the lessons, we will use Junior Great Books. The JGBs combine literature and shared inquiry to create a rich experience with the reading. It takes about a week to get through one story and all the follow up activities. We're starting our first JGB this Monday and I'm excited to see how it all plays out. We're reading Caporushes, a folktale based on Cinderella. Each student will have his/her own copy of the story, and we'll read it altogether. The follow ups include critical thinking pieces, BCR activities, and shared inquiry discussions.
If you are interested in using Junior Great Books in your school, you can find information here: https://www.greatbooks.org/
As a fellow third grade teacher, I can really relate with you. =) When I was teaching 1st grade last year, the students were learning how to read. Now in third grade, they're reading for understanding. It's definitely different, but I'm excited for rich discussions we'll have in our reading groups.
ReplyDeleteI struggle with guided reading a lot. I feel like that’s where I have the most room for improvement. My reading specialist gave me this time breakdown to follow and I think it helps keep me on track. Some of it needs to be tweaked for older kids but it might be helpful to you.
ReplyDelete- Warm up by reading old books (2min.)
- Practice high frequency words (3 min)
- State Objective
- Book introduction (3 min)
o Picture walk
o Explain new vocabulary
o Language pattern
o Find known words
o Review concepts of print
- Students read (5-8 min)
- After reading activity (4 min)
o Word work
o Discussion to help comprehension
o Write a sentence
o Journal
- Restate objective
Erin, I completely agree with you about guided reading. As we have talked about lately, we haven't really had instruction on how to teach guided reading. For me, I had to have the reading specialist in my school come in and teach a group for me. It was nice to watch someone do it, and it seemed to work well, but only if you have that full 15 minutes for each group. For most of last year, and this year, I have 5 reading groups. Since I'm only supposed to be in guided reading for an hour, that makes things complicated. I find myself with my groups for only about 10-11 minutes. My high reading group, which is reading level L books, sometimes doesn't have a lot of time with me. I have them read by themselves and then we meet to talk about the follow up. Since these kids are WAY above grade level, I unfortunately don't spend as much time with them.
ReplyDeleteI know that I am still learning this whole process with you, but this is what I do with my lower level students:
- practice writing word wall words on white boards
- preview book by taking a picture walk and front loading them with any difficult words/parts they might encounter
- read the text
- follow up: making connections, writing about their favorite part of the story, copying specific sentences, including illustrations to help them visualize what just happened, etc.
For my higher level students a typical lesson looks like this:
- preview book, making predictions, discuss any new "tools" or words they will encounter
- read text
- discussion of what happened in the book and what the important parts of the story are
- follow ups may include: writing about text features, writing about facts vs. opinions (in non-fiction texts), writing about character traits, writing about problem and solution, making connections, making up a different end of the story, etc.
I hope you can use some of this information. I know we are both still learning how to do this, but the main thing is to find what works for your students. Good luck Erin!