Guided Reading Things

Guided reading is in full swing!  I absolutely love this small-group time with my students.  They are fully involved in Daily 5 and I can focus (with the help of a fabulous parent volunteer or two, or six) on my reading group.

One of the big focus points for our school is incorporating writing along with our reading.  In order to accomplish this my students have to respond to their book in some way.  One of the easiest ways to do that is to use a graphic organizer.  I will pre-print multiple copies of various organizers so that I have them on hand.  I actually three-hold punch them and keep them all in my guided reading binder!  Click here to see other posts I have done that show my guided reading organizers.

To get these sheets click here to go to my TPT store

Click here to get a free copy of this sheet

Magic Tree House #27: Thanksgiving on Thursday is one of my favorite books to use at the time of the year.  Not only does it give us a good view at what life was like during the time of the Pilgrims, but the kids LOVE Magic Tree House books and so they can't wait to continue reading it!  

For guided reading I use it with a more independent group. This is the first time I use a chapter book with them for guided reading.  While most of the time I use a graphic organizer or notebook response to respond, for this book I use a packet.  

Since this is their first experience with locating specific information within the text I like to give them multiple choice questions.  They also encounter a fair amount of vocabulary in this book so I have them focus on specific vocabulary words from each chapter.  

You can get this packet in my TPT shop

Guided Reading

During guided reading I like to follow up each book with a writing response of some kind.  I used to write out comprehension questions in each each student's reading notebook.  That took a loooooong time to do and it didn't give me the freedom of working on reading strategies-it only focused on answering specific comprehension questions.  

Thus the need for some graphic organizers that helped my students respond to their book and practice a reading strategy.  

The easiest solution for me is to have a bunch of copies on hand so that I can pull out a sheet that matches with our discussion.  

My students do a great job with these and there are enough of them that we don't do the same one over and over.  At the beginning of the year we do a lot the sheets together and then as the year goes on they do more and more of it at home as part of their reading homework.  I'm amazed at how independent they are by the end of the year!!

This is a freebie page from my Reading Response Sheet packet.

Here is a preview of what some more of the pages look like.  You can click on any of the pictures and it will take you to my TPT store!

Thanksgiving Week!

Thanksgiving week is upon us!  I don't know what your school week looks like but we go through Wednesday at lunchtime!  Here are a few activities that we are doing to fill the shortened week!

Interactive Thanksgiving Books
The kids love taking these home right before Thanksgiving and sharing them with their families. They learn about the voyage on the Mayflower, chores of the pilgrim children, their housing and the first Thanksgiving feast!

To purchase this booklet click on the picture!

Contraction Practice

We start to really get into contractions about this time of the year.  The kids love that these 'PIES' actually help us learn our contractions.

Guided Reading

We are even reading about Thanksgiving this week with our Thanksgiving on Thursday book study!

 

To purchase this novel study click on the picture!

Snazzy Snacks

Last week we also did our November Snazzy Snack. We made Turkey Tracks!  It is so simple, they just spread cream cheese on a cracker and use chow mein noodles to make a 'turkey track' on the cracker!

Click here to get the sheets we use for Snazzy Snacks.

I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving holiday!