Guided Reading: Organization

Welcome to my Guided Reading area!

I wanted to do a post about my organization and set up, since it is something I thought a lot about over the summer, as well as 'perfecting' what works for me over the years. You can read previous posts about Guided Reading here)

First up, my Guided Reading binder.  I've made a few modifications over the years, and streamlined it a bit.

Opening up

On the left pocket side, I have the Guided Reading Schedule, originals of my reading skills sheet and anecdotal records, and the Scholastic GR Level Wheel.

Traditional lesson plans don't work for me (I never fill them out), so I thought I'd try this-just recording the books and skills we've covered, so I have some idea where we've been and things we need to focus more on.

I use the 2 by 2 in. post-its-it's a little bigger that the 1/5 by 2, and gives me a little more room to write notes :)

I have my binder tabbed, with a reading skills sheet in the front of each group, and then anecdotal record sheets for all students in that group.

My last tab has hole punched copies of the reading skills sheet and anecdotal records, so I can easily replace when I run out.

I also have pockets to insert any papers I need to save.

The Snapshot was a freebie from here (although I don't use it for my kids-I just store it there! :)

Moving around to my supplies. I have a bin to hold supplies-it's a little sparse now, but I'll add in task cards and other things as we start practicing some different skills.

In my bin, I have a cup holding pens, trackers, highlighters and skinny post-its.

In the bin, I have a variety of post-its. Task cards/fluency cards will be added as we go.

Behind my chair, I have hooks holding the fluency task cards that I got from Teaching With A Mountain View.

On the desk on my left side, I have worksheets, books, and a handy place to hide things :)

I've labeled all of the pockets, and worksheets are grouped by skill. (I use a mix of my own and various other sellers that I've bought over the years). They have a label at the top (staggered so I can see what's what).

As well as on the front-with a cute illustration!

Joanne's awesome Reading Response Menus right up front!

I did put packing tape over all the labels-just to make sure they stayed stuck :)

I also have the resources I use often handy.

Frequently used strategies from The Next Step in Guided Reading

Bought from here and bound at Staples-added tabs for each different section.

And that's it! We have Guided Reading books that came leveled with our literacy series (and the GR books are pretty decent), as well as a book room I can pull from. Of course, I also have some sets of my own. :)

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

Five for Fraturday

Happy Saturday! We've done some pretty cool things the last few weeks-check them out!

We've spent some time working on subtracting big numbers-using place value chips to help us!

And some writing on the table-which the kids flipped over!

Open House was coming, so we wrote biopoems about ourselves. Some of them cracked me up!

We've been working on State Symbols-using our awesome state text book to fill out a foldable (which I made wrong-I meant to have it like french doors, but I didn't make the middle big enough-teacher fail!)

To finish up, I had them make their own state symbol! They could replace an existing one or make up their own-but it had to represent our state and they had to explain why. These were also on their desks for Open House. 

We had Open House.

 I had 13 out of 16 families show up-pretty good turnout! We don't do presentations-it just for the kids to show off what they've been doing. Some kids that are super quiet in class were definite chatterboxes with their parents!

I went a little crafty crazy, and bought some painting supplies so I can paint at home-I find it helps me relax!

I'm hoping to start this weekend-depends on how lazy I'm being! I already have ideas for 8 in my head!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

State Government

We've been spending some time lately focusing on our state government, and the roles of each of the different branches.

We started off by doing a Chalk Talk-an idea I got from Making Thinking Visible (a great read-I'm about halfway through!).

I wrote a question on 4 pieces of chart paper, and had the students write down what they thought. We rotated around the papers, and I asked them to read what previous friends had written before they wrote what they thought-it might trigger something else!

Then, we put them up on the board to discuss them.

There were some very interesting things that they thought off! (Mostly wrong-but still interesting!)

We did a mini-lesson on the branches-using a tree to help with our thinking!

The next day, we did a concept sort.

I typed of the roles and responsibilities of each branch, and had them work in groups to decide where each one went.

Their conversations and reasoning was so interesting to lesson too...as well as how different groups worked together!

We reviewed our tree again, and sorted our any misconceptions they had.

Then, we hit up our branches of government foldable-where we went more into detail about each branch.

For their mini-assessment, I had them create their own tree in their notebooks. I did type out labels for them, (although I forgot some and they had to write stuff in), and I allowed them to use their notebooks.

To wrap everything up, we ended with a mini version of the chalk talk and concept sort.

Next up-state symbols!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn