I appreciate the comments on my last post about scheduling issues. There were some good suggestions and I'm always open for more ideas. I try not to be too rigid in the way I do things so I'm open to finding the way to best meet my students' needs. One of the suggestions was about integrating my daily 5 and my literacy centers. That's my ultimate goal but I'm not sure how to transition into that. Right now we're only up to 8 minutes of read to self so I haven't been working with any students. I finally have literacy centers working for me and my students trained. So I'm not sure how to combine them. I think it would work if I didn't do some math and art in literacy centers. But that's the only way I can get some math centers in and some of the art projects in. So I'm still turning this all over in my head. I guess I want the best of both worlds and that isn't always possible.
Daily 5 is progressing pretty well with my kids. I've only introduced read to self. As I understood from reading the book, that's the way the sisters recommend it. Did any of introduce more than one at a time? All my students but two are reading to self with no problem. We haven't shopped for books yet or discussed i pick. I've just been letting them pick books from the library that are on the lowest AR level. The two that aren't I'm not sure what to do about. We would be at 10 minutes by now if it wasn't for these students. They won't read. They just flip through their books and don't even try to read the words or the pictures. They are two of my ELL students and I think they understand what they are suppose to do. At first I stopped us when they started flipping through the books. We modeled the bad behavior and the correct behavior. Then I just let them flip through the books as long as they were occupied the whole time. Yesterday they were finished in no time and they were just staring around the room. So I stopped us. The rest of the kids are getting frustrated because they can do the read to self. I would love some input or suggestions on what to do. I have talked to both students individually during read to self time and after. I hate for two students to prevent the rest from success.
I wanted to update about 2 of the things I've tried from Tim Rasinksi. The first was fluency practice with a poem. They are doing pretty well with this. Friday was the first opportunity we had for some of the students to read the poem to the class. They did awesome. I had a couple that could actually read it, some who had memorized it but it was ok. Then I had a couple that couldn't read it but were content to track the words and repeat after me. I think it was a valid experience for all of them. The other thing was the mining for interesting words. The kids seem to be noticing words more as we read. I finally made a poster to post them on and I think after a week on the interesting word wall they will move to our word wall. I'd love to post some pictures but my camera is still mia but I did get an iphone last night so hopefully I can post some that way.
This isn't the most exciting post but it's a peek at what we're doing for reading. Friday is the 100th day of school so check back to see all the fun we had.
One of the things that helps my kids is I give them their reading group books to put in their book boxes (for about a month, then I collect them and start over). I don't worry about the levels for the other 3-5 picture books that I let them keep in their book boxes. They can reread them using either retelling a familiar story or making up a story to go with the pictures.
ReplyDeleteThe sisters suggests giving kids without stamina to match the rest of the class a sensory break with playdough (or something else) but I have never done that. I figure they are not where everyone else is yet but they will make it. Some of my higher readers are worse because they rush through to show off! It's Kindergarten, though, so I don't stress. They will get there.
I think I start Buddy Reading soon after Read to Self. Once again, the reading group books really help because they read them to each other. I let my kids choose who to read with and it really is working great.
Your kids already are writing so Working on writing should be easy. My kids get a special paper. I model how to make a quick picture and then write. They get to share their writing when we gather back together and they love that so they are pretty motivated. By this time of the year, most of them can get a sentence or two done (some much more).
Your literacy centers can be your word work center. If you need to you can add art or math as one of the choices (I have a friend who does that). If you don't have listening centers, don't offer that as one of the five. Just do what you can.
It is easy to do once you jump in.
Good luck!
Give yourself credit for the progress you are making!!
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I have been working with two kindergarten students myself in reading. What type of poem did you choose to work with? I recently found examples using poems to assess fluency and are interested in your activity.
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