6/20/2014
It's summer time! Time for teachers to kick back and relax by the pool, right? Haha! Well, hopefully you get some time to relax in the sun but we all know teachers never really take a break from school! We are always thinking ahead to next year and doing lots of planning and preparing. I have teamed up with several other teacher-authors to bring you this summer stock up linky where you can learn about some pretty cool products and
grab tons of free teaching resources along the way!
Enter to Win all 3 Products in my Summer Stock Up Giveaway! I'm also putting them on sale for 20% off this weekend!
Guided reading is one popular method of teaching reading today. It involves a teacher working with small groups of students; guiding their reading process. Students use reading strategies such as predicting, connecting, summarizing and more to critically analyze the text with guidance from the teacher (for more specifics on guided reading click here to download a free brochure). I have chosen to highlight three of my products that could be used with your guided reading groups along with some tips. Keep reading to grab a free sample of these products and enter to win all 3!
Product #1 Reading Fluency & Goal Setting Posters & Graphs
TIP: Build Student Ownership through Goal Setting
Before students can set appropriate goals they must be taught what goals are and how to
write meaningful, achievable goals. I have created a set of goal setting posters that teach students the definition of goals and the difference between short-term and long-term goals. They learn what it means for a goal to be specific, attainable, and measurable. Students also learn the difference between reading comprehension and reading fluency as well as learning about reading rate (WPM).
The rest of the product focuses on reading fluency with a WPM chart and 20 different graphs to chose from. Since students may be a different reading levels I have included
a variety of graph options with similar styles.
TIP: Build Student Ownership through Progress Monitoring
Students should have a sense of ownership by tracking their own progress. Progress monitoring can be done in a variety of ways. Reading fluency is one area where students can keep track of their progress by charting their words per minute (or reading rate).
Students use my reading fluency graphs to chart their daily or weekly progress. Each week they set a goal and graph their results. At the end of the week they color the target if they got a bullseye (reached or exceeded their goal), were very close (within 5 WPM), or close (within 10 WPM). If they missed the target that week they can adjust their goal for the following week. Quarterly progress graphs are also included.
Product #2 Reading Portfolios
TIP: Build Student Ownership through Data Collection
You've probably heard of writing portfolios but how about a reading portfolio? This is a place where students can keep track of their progress in reading throughout the year. They might include samples of their work in reading such as book reports, charts, reading logs, awards and more. We would keep a "works-in-progress" folder where we would put all the papers we wanted to save for our portfolios. Then at the end of the year we go through our papers and write up a table of contents for our reading portfolios and put them together into a spiral bound book that students can take home as a lasting keepsake.
Product #3 Sequencing Sort Skill Center
TIP: Make Reading Assessments Fun & Hands On
Assessing reading comprehension doesn't have to be done with a paper and pencil test.
Make test-taking more enjoyable by turning it into a hands-on activity! Hands-on activities may include creating posters, dioramas, acting out a scene of the book and more. Sequencing can be a difficult skill to master. In my sequencing sort skill center students use picture card sets (of 3) to tell a story. They put the cards in order of first, next and last and then write about them. Blank cards are also included so students can create their own sorts. This center would work great with guided reading as students could make a picture card set to go along with the passage they are reading and then write about the order of events. Another great hands-on way to assess comprehension!
