Well, the dust has settled and my class has settled into a wonderful bunch of readers practicing their reading skills on a daily basis. Currently, my first graders are doing three rounds of the Daily Five. We begin with four leveled groups either working on listening to reading, doing word work, writing, or meeting with me. For round two, we all buddy read. To wrap it all up and practice our strategies, we read to self for our third and final round. I don't know why I never thought to set up my reading time this way. I find it works so much better and the students are more focused when we buddy read before going to read to self. It seemed when we read to self first, the students just wanted to talk and share their books anyway. This just gets it out of the way!

Today I will do a focus on Word Work. For my word work right now, students have a selection of word work centers. Most of which revolve around our Fundations word program. A few of my favorites are the Boggle center. I'm sure you have seen this on Pintrest. Letters hang on the back of a door and the students make words.



I included a printout so that students can copy the letters. That way once I change the letters, students can still work on the old board if they want to. I will attach the Boggle recording sheet as a FREEBIE for my followers!



 Click here for a free Boggle FREEBIE!

 

Another fun one is called Souper Speller. I found Campbell's soup containers which contain letter cards. Students manipulate the cards to make words and record them on the sheet.

Slow and Steady!

That is our key right now. In our first grade we are continuing to work on read to self all together. As of last Friday we began breaking into our four groups and two groups are buddy reading while two groups listen to reading. Prior to this, we were all buddy reading. The students do very well buddy reading. Not sure if I posted this already, but I actually launched read to self and buddy reading at the same time this year. I must say it was a good move.

Listening to reading always has its difficulties. Students don't know how to independently use the computers or listening center. I love giving them a cassette tape and watching them attempt to open the case like it was Pandora's Box! This year, I put one student in charge of computers for the week. I teach them how to get the computers up and running and the hope is that they will in turn be able to get them up and running for the rest of the week. In a perfect world, it works, but it is still better than me doing it all the time.

For now, we are holding here. Just continuing to practice with these three until they become second nature. We are also doing our fairy tale unit right now which is new for us at the beginning of the year. I love it though. It works nicely into getting things up and running.
I will keep you posted!



Practicing read to self



Practicing buddy reading

Ok...so evidently resolutions are not my strong suit. Well here we are a new year and a new chance to try again. It is one of the reasons I love teaching so much. My kiddo have had 2 days of school thus far. We haven't even begun practicing for our reading time. I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't even know what to call my reading program anymore. Does it even matter? It has morphed into this crazy "Daily Guided Workshop" model. It has tiny hints of Guided Reading and a full bouquet of Daily 5 and Readers Workshop...sounds more like a nice bottle of wine doesn't it? I suppose as teachers we all do this...utilize several programs/theories/philosophies until we achieve what we want (or an identity crisis). I am just happy to be teaching quality reading instruction to a bunch of wonderful students! How does everyone else feel?