My Cute Little Reading Room
Sunday, September 25, 2016
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I have the smallest little reading classroom, but it's so cozy and home-like/welcoming, I love it and so do the students. I have a book corner, a flexible seating area for independent reading and a welcoming guided reading table with my favorite... sunflowers!
Independent Reading
Independent reading is the big push within our district and I think it's so important. All children need to be reading. We can teach strategies, but unless they are reading choice books that they truly love and can appreciate, they will never grow and succeed. While independent reading I confer with my students. It's ok if you haven't read the book they are reading. As long as you know the genre and ask genre based questions about the text to allow yourself to see if they are reading with understanding- that's most important.
Positive Mind, Positive Vibes
I have always told myself, thinking positive allows for positiveness in your life. Last year at work they started discussing growth and positive mindset for the workplace and classroom. It's what I have always done and now it's amazing that everyone is trying their hardest to have a growth mindset and be a part of the energy bus.... Stay positive in the classroom and your positiveness will rub off onto your children.
Christmas Board
Monday, September 5, 2016
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The children did a writing activity where they discussed their favorite Christmas book. Look…. We even have REAL Christmas lights on the board! How neat?!?!?! 
Summarize
Summary Outline – TpT – Check out my teacher made worksheet on TpT for summarizing. I use this with my little ones when learning how to figure out what happened first, next, then & last. This is a good, basic graphic organizer before writing a paragraph. Hope you enjoy it!
Mrs. K ♥
Exit Tickets
Exit tickets can be found on my TpT site! I print them in color, laminate, place Velcro on the back and use them over and over again!
Enjoy! Hope they come in handy.
Reading Apps
Take a look at these great apps available at iTunes Store. Most are for phonics, but if you look at the right sidebar of my page you’ll notice the picture that says, “Epic!” – click on it and it’ll bring you to a really cool link for books. Your child can make an account, read or listen on audio and it keeps track of what they’ve read, how fast they read it, etc. Enjoy!
Phonics Genius
Phonics Awareness
Bongo Spelling
Simplex Spelling Phonics
Hairy Letters
Word Wizard
*Also- Check out another WODNERUL site for parents and teachers. Reading Rockets is really resourceful.
Reading Rockets – Phonics App Suggestions
Please look on the right sidebar of my page as well and try out the site Epic! – it’s really amazing for your young readers!
Mrs. K ♥
Fundations I Can Statements
I just re-did the Level II I Can Statements on TpT!!!! Check it out to get the updated version!
Enjoy :)
Mrs. K♥
Video Shorts and Graphic Organizers
I finally finished!!!! Please see my TpT posting on Graphic Organizers/Video Shorts to go along with it.
My 6th graders LOVE these. Whenever I start a new comprehension strategy I always introduce it with a Pixar Video Short to go along with the strategy we will be discussing. While they are watching the Video Short, they take notes on the graphic organizer and we discuss it in depth after.
This really makes them look at it differently and breaks up the monotonous of just reading a passage or book and learning that strategy. They then will know how to apply it to the different text types that we do with that strategy.
Enjoy!
Mrs. K ♥
Valentine's Day Bulletin Board
My colleagues who are in the reading department with me, we came up with this months bulletin board together. This month was a fun one and the children LOVED IT!!! We made word clouds hearts with adjectives of someone special in our lives! They came out AMAZING!!!!
Mrs. K ♥
Leveled Literacy Intervention
Hello!
I figured I would write a little bit about the program I use with my students, so if you’re a parent you’re able to see what your student does with me throughout the week and if you’re an educator you are able to see how I implement the program.
The LLI kits support below grade level students who struggle in reading and writing. They are not for whole class lessons, but rather small intimate group settings, no more than 4-6 students in a group. There are different colored kits (orange, green, blue, red & gold). I have the green and blue kits which are for levels 1-3.
Leveled Literacy Intervention is a scientifically-based program that works with struggling readers so they are able to reach the level they need to be on. The program is fast paced and provides students with comprehension, fluency, writing, phonics, & vocabulary throughout each lesson. The majority of the program focuses on fluency and writing.
As mentioned above, I work with the green kit (1st grade) and blue kit (2nd-3rd grade). There are 110-120 or so lessons in each kit. Each lesson has 4 colored copies of the book and 6 black & white copies (take home books) or each book.
The program supplies canvas bags with a spot that fits an average sized index card in it perfectly which I place their name on to take their black and white copies of the book home to read and return.
The teachers manual walks you through each lesson verbatim, but on TpT I purchased the lessons printed out on single pages that I placed in a binder which has made it a lot easier with planning. There is also aPrompting Guide and resource book: When Readers Struggle: Teaching That Works which are available in the kit. The Prompting Guide is a great tool to use because it targets reading behaviors and gives you word-for-word what you are able to say to guide your student.
Each lesson takes about 30 minutes to teach. The kits come with a large variety of high-interest texts: fiction, non-fiction, classic tales and series books (Meli, The Fun Club, etc.). Each level has 10 lessons that are numbered. The even lessons introduce the New Book (on their level) and the odd lesson is book on their independent level to build fluency.
I set my week up in 3 days. I see my students 3 times a week/30 minutes a session.
I needed to figure out a way to touch upon each part of the program that works best for me and my students.
On my board (so the students can see the schedule as well and get used to the routine) I have a 3 day schedule:
Day 1: Reading Schedule
Re-read quietly – 5 minutes
Goals – 1 minute
Phonics/Word Work- 5 minutes
New Book – 15 minutes
Letter/Word Work – 5-10 minutes
Exit Ticket
Day 2: Testing Day Schedule
(While I am calling 1-2 students over to do a reading record)
- Re-read quietly
- Unfinished sentences in Writing Book
- Word Bags (the word cards – quiz a friend, play memory)
- Worksheet on Table (one of the fold sheets if unable to get to the day before)
Then I continue with our independent reading book for that day following the teacher’s manual.
Day 3: Writing Day
In their writing book (LLI comes with red, yellow and purple writing books with blank pages in it – the colors mean nothing other than allowing the children to have a choice and the blank pages which are for beginner writers to use. It allows them to not get distracted and concentrate so much on filling up the lines, but rather to be concious of placing the print on the page rather than just filling up the lines. When finished the story or sentences they wrote can be easily read without the distraction of any lines on the paper).
Let’s get into the different pieces of the lesson now….
Phonics/Word Work:
This is a quick piece before starting the book for the day. Students are explicitly and systematically taught during this part. The kits provide, Alphabet &b Consonant Cluster Charts (we just do all of our work in our writing book not to waste more paper), poems, letter and word games, and lists of suggested words (what I send home in their ‘word baggies’). I like to try and incorporate magnetic letters with cookie trays, children going up to the board to write, highlighting in our poem book, and using colored pens in our writing book. There are many great apps that work on phonics as well (see my previous post).
New Book:
This is when the instructional leveled book gets introduced to them. I always discuss the cover photo, genre, title and then do a picture walk stopping at words I think may be difficult for them while discussing the spelling rule for that word and definition. I then give a book to each child and have them use my whisper phones that I made. NO ROUND ROBIN READING (where you go around and each child reads a page in the book) it DOES NOT build on fluency and because of the constant picking of names and changing rate of reading the comprehension is then lost. I LOVE whisper reading. I start my group off at different points, so they aren’t hearing each other read at the same point, and they use the whisper phones that magnify their voice into their own ear. I am then able to hear each of them, stop them to ask questions individually and they know instead of interrupting to ask what a word is, they point to it and look at me. Don’t popcorn read in small reading groups! It just doesn’t work and is outdated.
Writing:
LLI has a writing component. It is split into three different ways to teach writing: interactive, dictated, independent. I like to switch it up, or do even more then one way at a given time.
*Interactive writing: This is when we work together. The children write on chart paper, or the board and we compose sentences, or a story about what was read taking turns and brainstorming together.
*Dictated writing: This is when I say sentences and they write it down on their own. Some students have a difficult time hearing all of the spoken words and putting it down into their writing book. I realized using a manipulative of some sort to have them put it down for each word they hear in the sentence allows them to make sure they aren’t missing a word. I like them to also listen to the sentence first and visualize it, then if they need to place the manipulative down, then write.
*Independent writing: This is when the student write on his/her own in their writing book. They usually do this mostly on testing days while I am doing reading records with other children. This allows me to see their growth throughout the school year.
Mrs. K ♥
Reading Levels
I use the Fontas & Pinnell (F&P) Reading Level Chart. This chart is great because it breaks the school year into quarters and where your child should be at those months.
This one below is a little different than the one above. This one has each month of the school year, not just broken into quarters.
Mrs. K ♥
Read Across America
I made four worksheets for Read Across America, celebrating Dr. Seuss’ birthday this March! I took four of his books:
Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?
There’s a Wocket in my Pocket
One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish
Green Eggs and Ham
I took words out of the first couple of pages of each of the books and left blanks for the children to be creative and come up with their own Dr. Seuss writing to go along with the book of their choice. This wasn’t fully my idea at all. My wonderful partner actually came up with the idea, I just created the sheets (that you can find on my TpT store).
Enjoy!
Mrs. K ♥
Evidence Based Terms
I am starting to finish up non-fiction summaries with my 6th graders. We have been reading the passage, Lights! Camera! Invention by John James. This passage is all about Thomas Edison and the inventions he has made. It’s really engaging and the sixth graders love when we read this passage. We have been discussing what goes into writing a non-fiction summary and using a graphic organizer to help us out before we begin to write.
After we finish this strategy, we will be moving on to text evidence. I had found a great anchor chart on another blog, but re-wrote the sentences and changed some things around to my liking. I also made my own text evidence charts to go along with it that you can find on my TpT store if you’re interested!
Mrs. K ♥
Lyrics for Comprehension
I have been working day and night on getting together “Lyrics for Comprehension” for my 6th graders. I am using the common core standards so they can be combined with other lessons in the classroom that are being taught in reading. Each song lyric has a graphic organizer and questions to go along with it.
I really feel that practicing comprehension strategies through song is an amazing way to allow students to really be engaged in the lesson. Sometimes it’s really difficult to find reading passages that are of high interest.
This packet isn’t complete yet, but once it is, I will update this post and give the link to my TpT store to be able to purchase it. Much research has been done showing that children learn comprehension strategies through music. Think about it – it’s no different than a poem, but it has upbeat music to go along with it to keep them engaged. Plus, it’s different. It’s not the ordinary, so they are always excited for some music whether they are familiar with the songs or not.
It truly is a MIX of music…
1.Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World
2.All I Want is You
3.You’ve Got a Friend in Me
4.Hall of Fame
5.Lean on Me
6.Better Together
7.Mean & Roar
8.Forever Young
9.It Won’t Be Like This for Long
10.Shake it Off
Mrs. K ♥
Give a Book, Get a Book
I will be placing a basket of gently used books outside my classroom door. Students will be encouraged to trade books. They will bring in a gently used books that they no longer want and place it in the bin. They will then pick out a new book they would like to take home to read. This will allow students to be submerged in a whole array of different children’s books! What a great way to share books!
Mrs. K ♥
Sight Word Practice
There are many ways to practice sight words, but I just found this awesome website where you can put in your own sight words and it makes a “Snakes & Ladder” board game to play! How neat?
Check it out and have fun!!
Mrs. K ♥
I made this phonological awareness chart to be able to clearly see all the parts it makes up. Many children have a weakness in decoding in the early grades because a lot of the programs schools use go straight into letter sounds and forming words. Many children are missing this phonological piece. There are many games and activities that can be done at home to give your child these skills.
Mrs. K ♥
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