Using Interactive Readers During Guided Reading

Get ready ladies and Gents, this is going to be a long one, but I promise there is a surprise at the end.
The other day I wrote, and shared pictures of my workstations. This post will be about what my small groups are doing with me during that time. 

I've mentioned before that because I only see my students for an hour a day, I only get to see my reading groups 3 days a week. The other two day I concentrate on writing, but that is a post for another day.

Each week I see my small literacy groups I try to teach or review a reading skill and teach a new HFW or sight word, but I try to keep a routine to my lessons. This allows my ELL students to anticipate what we will do, and gives them comfort and confidence to tackle new skills.

On Monday...

I usually either introduce or teach a new skill. Sometimes this is a reading skill other times it is a comprehension strategies, and other times we have some comprehension practice. I mainly use the districts reading series or Scholastic's leveled readers for this lesson. 

By using these books, it gives me two days for my copies to arrive from the print center and for a wonderful helper to cut apart for us.

On Wednesday...
I switch it up a bit. Instead of going to a traditional book, I have my students create and complete Maria's, from Kinder Craze, Interactive Readers! 

These little books have transformed my small group time. 

I print the books back and front and have them stapled by the copy machine. This way all I have to do is have them cut apart. You get two copies for sheet and so I only have to print half the number of pages.

One of the things I love about these books is that I get to develop my ELL/ESL kids vocabulary, not just with their HFW or sigh words but with content vocabulary too! The HFW or sight words are taught the whole week long. We talk about the word and how to spell it, then discuss the theme of the book.

Once we start, I talk about the content vocab on each page.

I print the page with the cut apart letters in a different color so they are easy to identify and stand out while the kids are reading.

I store these letters in a snack size Ziplock bag, and then just dump them on my table when it is time to glue them down. I get to do 2 things at this point, I am able to see how my students are doing with letter id and check how well they are doing learning their new HFW/sigh word of the week. *Side note: I do all the glueing at this point. I just put a dab of glue in each box. This allows me to save time AND glue.*

After glueing the words down we go back and read the whole sentence.

 

Finally, once we have created the whole book, we go back and read it in it's entirety. Here is a video of two of my boys doing just that.

It isn't perfect, but that is the whole point. This is a learning process. :)
Once the kids are done reading, they get to go put their name on their book at their seat. This allows me to move on to the next group and not have to keep writing utensils at my table.

On Friday...
We used to read our books one more time, and really delve down into our comprehension skills of the week. Sadly we are now learning TWO words a week in Kinder, so the good news is that we get to do it all over again!

I do still work on Reading Comp, I just tend to work on it more during and whole group reading and just revisit it during guided reading.
On the plus side my students are now taking double the books home to read and practice.

I was lucky enough to find Maria's Interactive Readers when she first started creating them and got the bundle early. One of the perks is that if you buy the bundle now, you get the future books for free. Maria will update the bundles until they reach 100 books. We are currently on bundle number 2! So if you are looking to get it at a lower price, NOW is the time.

So here is the good news for you, Maria has graciously offered to give a copy of bundle number one, that is 100 books, to one of my readers!
That is right folks a give away!!!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

That is a $50.00 dollar value ladies and gents!

If you aren't sure the interactive readers are for you, Maria also has smaller seasonal bundles, for a fraction of the cost, OR individual books for just $1.00 each, in her shop. Just click on the image below to go there.