Guided Reading~Easy Prep Lessons

Hello!

This month has been crazy for my Guided Reading groups! Between trying to benchmark everyone for report cards, trying to get DIBELS Next Fluency for everyone for report cards and kids missing/or not having it due to Science lessons (We have a local naturalist center come in to teach our kids about Rocks and Minerals-it's great lessons, but and hour and a half each...), we have not have the time to do 'traditional' books.

Enter some creativity!

One thing I used a lot of was Diane's Close Reading packs-I found them great, because I could have the kids read while I was benchmarking/fluency-ing others. Plus, I could give them the attached sheets to either work on in group, or to work on in their class.

When we finally finished all of that, there wasn't enough time to do a full book. I didn't want to carry over a full book, so I brainstormed.

I pulled out some wonderful task cards from Teaching With a Mountain View (seriously, check this girl out!!)

I pulled out her Character Change Task Cards, because that is something that we had previously learned and talked about in both my groups, and it's always good to have a refresher!

The colors don't look like this-my printer was running out of ink when I was printing and I didn't realize it!

I read the titles of each one and had them pick their cards (I usually do picking within small groups by playing the number game-I'm thinking of a number between....).

Their job was to read the card and in their notebook, they needed to write what the character was like at the beginning and end, as well as what happened to make that character change.

I did it twice with one group and once with another.

They LOVED it! They asked if we would do it again (of course I said yes!), but we would be starting a book after break.

Another activity I did was to pull out some NatGeo Nonfiction on Animals.

I deliberately went with easier readers (and animals!) because I wanted them to be done fairly quickly.

We've been working on summarizing in my class (and this group all belongs to me:), so I had them pick a book (again, by playing the number game), and told them that they need to read their book because they were going to teach their friends about their animal by summarizing it.

I did have them doing the reading for two guided reading days-just to make sure their work was up to par :)

They loved this as well! They were so excited to pick their own books, and loved sharing about them (except for one 44 word sentence-which led to a run on sentence lecture!)

Easy Prep lessons I used:

Easy Prep Lessons #1- Diane's Close Reading packs
Easy Prep Lessons #2- Teaching With a Mountain View Task Cards (she has tons-for pretty much everything!)
Easy Prep Lessons #3- NatGeo Kids Readers

These easy prep lessons can be used at any time, and the kids love them. I'll definitely be using all of these again!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn