Reading | The Teaching Reef

Category: Reading

Mar 03

A Reader’s Toolkit and A Little Classroom Catch Up!

Well I have some great news… we were approved for the house loan! =) So it is officially our home! Thank you to anyone who thought about us during this process. Your well wish and thoughtful prayers are so appreciated. It really made this big step in our life comforting and one for the memory books. It is such an awesome feeling to call it OUR home. After renting we just couldn't make it OUR home, if you know what I mean…. NO painting, wallpapering, or making holes for pictures. It really didn't feel like OUR Home! So now I can't wait! If you follow me on Pintrest you know and are probably deactivating the follow button as I write this because I have been pinning anything and everything to do with decorating a home! We did manage to make one new purchase for our home! A couch!!! It's a sectional and it has plenty of space for all of our family and friends. Check it out!

Okay so now onto all things school! I have to tell you that making such a big move and keeping up with school is really hard. So I am trying not to focus on the fact that my posts have been less productive. So incase you want to know what new products I am working on and adding to my TpT store just click the follow button on my store! The trend lately has been post new products and then a week later I FINALLY get around to posting about it.

Talking about new products I just added A Reader's Toolbox to my store. Lately I have been working with my reading coach and learning about how as readers we use many tools as we read a text. So having those available to the students as you meet with them in small group or when they are off diving into a text on their own they need to have the strategies and skills you have taught them to tackle any text. So that is when I came up with a Reader's Toolbox.

I have covered 23 reading tools! above is a reference sheet that comes in the unit. It has the picture of the tool, its purpose, as well as a picture. It is great to have with you during small group. Have this handy reference guide as you read through text and get prepared for your students. This was definitely made for teachers in mind. Of course, as always, you can use it however you wish.

In this unit you will have a few resources at your fingertips. The first is mini strategy cards. These cards have the strategy name and a picture representation of the tool. These are great to laminate and add a little hole on the top so that they can be placed on a ring. Students could have their own ring with tools you have taught them in small group. That way when they go off to independent reading they have tools to choose from.

Second, I have added bookmarks. These bookmarks have the tool at the top. Then below you will find thinking stems that students can use to respond to text. I don't know about all of you but I just love thinking stems. It gives the students the language you want them to be using and it makes them sound like little teachers! =)

Last , I have made teaching posters for you to use in instruction. There are 24 strategy posters. I have been asked when I was going to make reading skill poster and I am happy to say they are finally here! In the corner of each poster there is a picture of the tool used in the Reader's Toolbox! No matter what strategies you teach your students there will be a poster for it! Then because they are each 8 1/2 X 11 you can easily add them to a bulletin board in your classroom!

To finish off this unit, I have made a craftivity! Yep! You can create a working functional toolbox for all your students. The possibilities are endless. There are three different options with templates to use. Whatever you use- paper, cardstock, or construction paper there will be a option of templates for you. i think these would be great to store small group tools in so that when they are reading with you there is a stagey that they can pull out of their toolbox and practice using! Again you can use this whoever you want to! =)

So Valentines day this year was so much fun! The Minute To Win It games that I did with my kiddos last year was a big hit! You can check those games out here! Also because I am teaching with Diana this year look at all the goodies our kiddos brought in! It's a ton I know!

Something I made that was new this year was our Love Bots! They were a total hit. The kids were obsessed. I mean OB-SESSED! I used the big envelopes so that the kids could put all their candy and cards inside them! Then we closed them up and sent them home. These were great!

In science we learned about all things soil. I am working on putting all these resources into one unit but it is no where near ready to post. So I will keep you posted in this resource. I was working close with our school's science contact and I LEARNED a lot this year. One of my big ahh-haa moments was what soil actually is. Do you know what makes up soil? If you are unsure about your answer stay tuned for some helpful resources!! In the mean time, here is a look at our long term investigation.

Well, that is all I have for you today! I hope all of you had a great month of February and wishing you all a great month of March. Remember spring break is just around the corner. =)

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Posted in Reading, Science, TpT, Valentine's Day

Dec 02

Unit updates and Elf on the Shelf resource!

Well I don't have anything to exciting to share with you this week, but I am trying to keep to my word of posting at least once a week. So sorry if there is no earth shattering activities/ideas…

Like I mentioned quickly before in another post, I am trying to structure my reading instruction so that it fits into a 30 minute period (reading focus, skill lesson, and phonics lesson). Let me just tell you that it has been harder than I thought! The students are loving the new phonics lessons and they are even translating the spelling focus into their writing! I get so excited when they do that! My phonics booklet unit is coming along. Here is what is in it so far.

I organized the phonics booklets by their vowel sound. Then I related that sound to the word families that have that vowel sound in them. This was time consuming to organize. But I am proud to say that I have successfully organized this part of the unit!

Then I wanted to create mini cards that have the word family on them as well as a word and picture to relate to the word family. These can easily be hole punched and placed on a ring to be used as cards for small group instruction. You could also use them to post on a bulletin board after each family is taught. Let me just tell you that finding clipart for all of the words has been tricky and time consuming! I can't wait to finish this unit up! I am hoping that next weekend I will be able to post this one.

As far as our reading lessons we have been focusing on retelling. During the beginning of the year I always teach/review the story elements with my students. I do this because I refer to them consistently throughout the year. That is just what I did when I started to teach retelling. We read the book titled The Hat by Jan Brett! I just love her stories and there is such great picture support in them as well.

Since I have been working closely with my school's reading coach (2-5 grade will have to take on the Common Core Standards next year, so I'm trying to get a head start) I thought I would share her great idea! As we reread through the text for the rest of the week we focused on small "chunks" of the text each day! They had a copy of the story typed up so that they could practice giving their evidence of why that was important as well as why that was the next correct detail in our retelling. When the students came up with their evidence we recorded it onto a class anchor chart. This anchor chart was organized using a T-Chart.

On one side of the T-Chart we wrote the characters in the story then on the other side we recorded the important details that went with that character. These details were not in sentence form. They were also not allowed to underline the entire sentence in the text! I want them to be accountable for their thinking not the authors! It went great! Then as their evidence of learning we had them write one to two sentences from our anchor chart of notes in their H.E.R.O. (reading) notebook! I am going to offer all these resources in my newest unit that is going to have resources for retelling as well as for using transitions in writing! However, I am most excited about the fact that it is all things gingerbread!

I also am hooked on ELF on the Shelf! It is so stinking adorable and there are so many cute ideas out there! I recently found this blog with tons of cute ideas for The Elf on the Shelf and thought I would pass it along. There are 25 ideas and all have clickable links to their resources! It is pretty darn awesome! The blog is called Over the Big Moon and Lisa and Pam are the fantastic bloggers that put this resource together. So if you are in need of some ideas make sure you click on their cute little button below!