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Description: Journals where children write their reactions to books they're reading or listening too. In these entries, the students write about ideas, comprehension and misunderstandings they have from the book. Some teachers give the students prompts to write about.
Advantages:
* Develop new ideas about the book
*Helps them better understand stories
Disadvantages:
* Time consuming
* Overly used
Source- Literacy in the Early Grades by Gail E. Tompkins

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Reading Worksheets, Spelling, Grammar, Comprehension, Lesson Plans

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Below you'll find free, printable reading logs in a variety of formats. Just click on the title to open the PDF and print. Browse each to decide which fits better with your needs. Some are daily reading logs, others include comment fields and many are themed with illustrations. The reading logs are designed for 1st grade, 2nd grade, and other elementary levels.

Reading Logs With Time Spent Reading

Reading Logs with Comment Fields

Summer Reading Logs

Reading Log Calendars

Reading Logs with Number of Pages Read Field

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Free Printable Reading Logs - 1st Grade, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th | K12reader.com

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Below you'll find free, printable reading logs in a variety of formats. Just click on the title to open the PDF and print. Browse each to decide which fits better with your needs. Some are daily reading logs, others include comment fields and many are themed with illustrations.

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Description: "Teachers use think-aloud procedure to teach children how to direct and monitor their thinking during reading." Students should first watch the teacher think aloud and then practice the strategy. "As they think aloud, children respond to the text, identify big ideas, ask self-questions, make connections, figure out how to solve problems that arise and reflect on their use of strategies."
Advantages:
* makes children more active during reading
*Pay attention to text more
Disadvantages:
*Time consuming
Source- Literacy in the Early Grades by Gail E. Tompkins

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Happy Veteran's Day everyone! I'm a day late for my Saturday/Sunday "snippet", but since today is a holiday, the weekend all kind of just mashes together. Last week, I decided that I'd write a little snippet about guided reading every weekend. Click here for my post from last week.

The goal of guided reading is to give your students the tools to become independent readers. The main way you do this is by teaching them strategies. Strategies are the key to guided reading! These strategies will help them when they get to a word they don't know and when they've read a word incorrectly. I think of those as accuracy strategies. There are also strategies to improve comprehension. There have been numerous posts about strategies by other bloggers. There are so many great resources out there! I will post another day about strategies I use, along with how I introduce and model them.

When I introduce a strategy, I tell them about the strategy, then I model how to apply it. I do this using T hink-Alouds. At the beginning of the year, I mostly use Think-Alouds to teach those accuracy strategies (like chunking words, skipping and going back, thinking about what makes sense). As the year goes on, I'll continue to do this as needed, but I start to use them more to model comprehension strategies.

I went back and forth about which post to do first, but then I realized that Think-Alouds are such a big part of how I teach so I opted to go with this first.

What is it?
Usually your comprehension of a text and decoding words happens in your head. When doing a Think-Aloud, you are vocalizing these thoughts and explaining your thinking process. The teacher is using words, that the students will understand, to communicate strategies good readers use while reading. I think this is one of the most important things a teacher can do. To do this, read aloud from a text and stop frequently to make predictions, make connections, clarify meaning (I also call this a "check in"), ask a question, summarize and decode words (use those accuracy strategies).

How do I use them?
To guide students in this process, there are questions and phrases you can teach them.

Decoding/Accuracy:

"That didn't make sense. I better go back and reread."

"I'm not sure what that word is. I'm going to cover this part of the word and read a small chunk first. s-p...sp. Now I'm going to read the rest of the word, i-ll..ill. sp-ill...spill."

"I've tried sounding out and chunking that word, so I'm going to skip it, read the rest of the sentence and go back. (model this)

Connecting:

"This reminds me of..."

"That was like the time when..."

Predicting:

"On the next page, I think..."

"I predict that..."

"I think I know what might happen next"

"This page makes me think that _______ will happen next"

Visualizing:

"I can picture..."

"I like the way the author described that. I'm going to stop and try to picture that in my head. I see..."

Questioning:

"I wonder..."

"Why did..."

"I don't understand why..."

"How did..."

"Is this because..."

"Where was..."

"Could this mean..."

Check in/Clarify:

"I'm confused about..."

"I'm not sure about..."

"I think this happened because..."

"I think this character did _______ because ________"

"I'll keep reading and check back to see if..."

"I'll reread this to make sure I understand"

"I didn't expect..."

Summarize/retell:

"Right now the character is..."

"So far..."

"On this page.."

"What just happened here..."

"I think this is mainly about..."

"The big idea is..."

To encourage your students, you could stop while reading and say/hold up one of those prompts from above and have them finish your sentence. You could have them finish your sentence in reader response journals or whisper to the person next to them.
When I am planning my guided reading instruction, I often look for good opportunities for students to apply this strategy. For example, if there is a page where I know my kiddos can all make a connection, I put a sticky note there and make a point to guide my students to stop and make that connection.

Being able to monitor their thinking and articulate these thoughts is a pretty advanced skill, but that is what we want our kiddos to be able to do.

Freebie!
Here is a graphic organizer that your students can use:

frame by: http://www.teachersnotebook.com/shop/Ms.Talley

clip art by scrappindoodles

I was thinking it would be cute to put the title on the book of this sheet.

The second one just includes two extra strategies (inference and check). I haven't taught inferences yet, so I wanted to make a separate sheet with that one for later in the year.

Using this Graphic Organizer

To use this sheet, first make sure you've taught all the strategies that are included. Choose your text. For extra scaffolding, find a part in the text that would lend itself to using one or more of these strategies. Have your students read, then stop them to do their Think-Aloud. You decide how much support you want to give them. At first, you may want to choose the strategy for them and start them out by using one of the prompts listed above. As they get better, you can let them choose which strategy they want to use. Kids love to share ideas, so they may do better if they get a chance to share their Think Aloud first, before filling out this sheet.

You could also use this sheet each time you teach a new strategy. You could then put all the sheets together to make a little book of all their Think Alouds.

Remember, using the Think Aloud strategy isn't something that is taught once or twice. It is on-going and it is used to introduce/model/practice ALL the other strategies (accuracy and comprehesion strategies).

Phew, that took a lot longer than I anticipated! Thank goodness I have such a sweet, supportive husband to take my kids out to play in the puddles for the past hour! I'd love to hear from you!! Comments are what keeps me blogging, so don't be shy! :)

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Happy Veteran's Day everyone! I'm a day late for my Saturday/Sunday "snippet", but since today is a holiday, the weekend all kind of just mashes together. Last week, I decided that I'd write a little snippet about guided reading every weekend. Click here for my post from last week.

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Description: Think, pair, share is a strategy that involves a way to get all of the students talking and participating. This strategy works best in groups of 4 or more. The teacher gives the class a question and then gives the students time individually to think. After the students had enough time to think, the groups will discuss their answers. After the students have had enough time discussing, the teacher will call on someone to share.
Advantages:
* Everyone is participating
* Students hear different ideas from other classmates
Disadvantages:
None
Source- In class

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Description: This is a dramatic performance of a script by a group of readers. "The students assume parts, rehearse by reading their characters' lines in the script, and then do a performance for their classmates."
Advantages:
* children have the opportunities to read good literature
* engage with text
* bring text to life
Disadvantages:
*  Can be time consuming
* Some won't like reading aloud
Source- Literacy in the Early Grades by Gail E. Tompkins

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I love snow days! My mindset is always "If I can't be at work, then I better make a good use of the day and work on TPT", so since Snowpocalypse hit my area, I had a snow day and had to get something done to show for it!

Reader's Theater is a big hit with my kids.

They love having their own lines!

I teach the one of the enrichment groups during our Core Extension time and these scripts are great for blooming readers!

So, I figured I just had to make my own stories.

Each story comes with a script for each character in the story.

The stories range from 2 characters to 4 characters.

Each story comes with character headbands.

This helps the kids keep their identity when they are presenting.

This products has been updated!

The set up of the Readers Theater pages have been changed to help students keep track of where they are reading. Check out the new pages.

If you're interested, click this image!

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I also have seasonal Reader's Theater, too!

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I love snow days! My mindset is always "If I can't be at work, then I better make a good use of the day and work on TPT", so since Snowpocalypse hit my area, I had a snow day and had to get something done to show for it!

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Description: "Rubrics are scoring guides that teachers use to assess the children's achievement." "Most of these guides usually have levels, ranging from high to low, with assessment criteria at each level." These are typically distributed to the students when they begin a project so they know what the teacher expects and how they will be graded.
Advantages:
* Better grades
* Helps children become better speakers, readers and writers
Disadvantages:
* Overly used
Source- Literacy in the Early Grades by Gail E. Tompkins

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Writing Rubric for Personal Narratives/Stories

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Use this simple writing rubric to help your students learn the difference between a 1, 2, 3, and 4 in the areas of capitalization, punctuation, spelling, handwriting, and parts of a story. The comparison to a cheeseburger is fun and helps students understand the scores in each area.

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Description: This is used to monitor children's comprehension. "The teacher sits one-on-one with a student and ask them to retell a story they just read or listened to aloud." "The student will organize the information they remember to provide a personalized summary that reveals their level of comprehension."
Advantages:
* Good for comprehension
* learn to organize important parts of stories
Disadvantages:
* Time consuming for one-on-one conversations with teacher
Source- Literacy in the Early Grades by Gail E. Tompkins

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ProTeacher! Storytelling lesson plans for elementary school teachers

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ProTeacher! Storytelling lesson plans for elementary school teachers

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Description: "Brief teasers that teachers use to introduce books and interest children in reading them. Teachers show the book, summarize it without giving away the ending, and read a short excerpt aloud to hook the students. The children use the same steps when they give book talks."
Advantages:
* Makes children excited to read book
*Teaches children how to summarize
Disadvantages:
* some students may give away too much information about book
Source- Literacy in the Early Grades by Gail E. Tompkins

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Description: "Short, focused lessons on literacy strategies and skills. These lessons usually last 15 to 30 minutes and sometimes the teacher may extend the lesson over several days as children apply the topic in reading and writing activities. An example of mini lesson could be how to insert quotation marks."
Advantages:
*can be whole group or small group
* more focused and faster lessons means less time taken
Disadvantages:
* Some kids may take longer to learn the lesson than others
Source- Literacy in the Early Grades by Gail E. Tompkins

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Description: These are "used to examine and categorize words according to their meanings, phoneme-grapheme correspondences, or spelling patterns."

Advantages:
*Very efficient
*Flexible
*Helps students remember word patterns

Disadvantages:
* Not helpful for all students
*Some may get more confused
Source- Literacy in the Early Grades by Gail E. Tompkins

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*This post contains affiliate links. Please read my full disclosure policy for more information.

Here we are on Day 5 of Teaching Spelling through Word Study, a 10-day series I'm doing with iHomeschool Network. We've spent a lot of time on the background for word study, so if this is your first day joining me, I hope you'll take a look back (click HERE or on the picture above to see a list of the posts thus far). Today's focus is because they are at the heart of word study!

What are Word Sorts?

Let me start by showing instead of telling. Take for example this ai/ay word sort:

If you were my child and working on these patterns, I'd ask you to cut them apart and sort these words as either having the ai or ay pattern (a visual sort). Your sort would look something like this:

Then, we'd talk about the words and patterns: What do you notice about the long a spelling in the first column/in the second column? When was the ai pattern used? When was the ay pattern used? So what generalization or rule can you form from studying all these words? (Answer: When I hear the long a sound in the middle of the word, I use the ai pattern and when I hear the long a sound at the end of a word, I use the ay pattern.)

The Benefit of Word Sorts

Categorizing is the fundamental way that humans make sense of the world. When students sorts words they are engaged in the active process of searching, comparing, contrasting, and analyzing. Word sorts help students organize what they know about words and to form generalizations that they can then apply to new words they encounter in their reading." (Words Their Way, 61)

1. Word Sorts are Hands-On

With word sorts, students learn by doing. Comparing, contrasting, manipulating, analyzing, formulating, creating; just a few words to describe what the student is doing while sorting the words.

2. Word Sorts Happen at the Child's Instructional Level

We spent some time yesterday on how to find your child's instructional level (also known as ZPD). This is where students learn best. Words for the word sorts are chosen to challenge, but not frustrate the child.

3. Word Sorts are Analytic in Nature

Many phonics programs are synthetic, like a puzzle. You give the child the puzzle pieces and ask him to put it together to form the entire picture. (Here are the letter sounds...now sound out these words.)

With word sorts, students are give the big picture (entire words) and asked to break them apart and analyze them, an important skill in reading and writing unknown words.

4. Word Sorts Don't Rely on Rote Memorization

"Effective word sorts require more than copying the words from a list as seen in traditional spellers. [Copying] the word is not as important as the physical sorting." (Mattmann and Cowan-founders of Spelling Scholar). Students are required to be active, not passive, participants in their own learning and understanding of how words work.

5. Word Sorts are Efficient

Each word sort contains many examples of that particular spelling pattern; more than a typical spelling worksheet. Word sorts (and the activities that accompany them) can also be done in a short amount of time. In our home, the word sorting activities take about 10 minutes maximum each day. And the same word cards can be used over and over for multiple purposes (more to come on this next week).

6. Word Sorts are Flexible

When I first taught in the classroom, all the kids had the same spelling list and everyone worked on the same phonics skill each week. I could clearly see that my spelling instruction worked for maybe 40% of my students, with it being WAY too easy for some kids and WAY too hard for other kids. This meant that at any given time, 60% of my class wasn't truly learning! I was frustrated, but unsure what do about it. When I discovered the word study approach my second year of teaching, my spelling instruction was forever changed. While I'm now homeschooling, it is even more obvious that my children aren't on the same spelling level. Word sorts (and picture sorts) help to differentiate that instruction, providing what each child needs.

{The 6 benefits listed above were adpated from Words Their Way.}

More Resources with Word Sorts:

~Becky

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This post contains affiliate links. Please read my full disclosure policy for more information. Here we are on Day 5 of Teaching Spelling through Word Study, a 10-day series I'm doing with iHomeschool Network. We've spent a lot of time on the background for word study, so if this is your first day joining me, ...

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Description: "Collections of words posted in the classroom that children use for word study activities and refer to when they're studying."
Advantages:
*Provide reference for the students during reading and writing
*Help students see patterns and relationships in words
Disadvantages:
*Students may constantly look at word wall instead of trying to sound out the words
Source- Literacy in the Early Grades by Gail E. Tompkins

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Language Arts

Ask students to hunt for words in their reading and writing that fit the phonic or word study pattern being studied. These words can create a word wall that illustrates examples of the different patterns studied. Students could keep a word study notebook to record the known patterns and their new understanding about words, and can play games and activities that apply their word knowledge.

Math

Word walls in math can provide visual cues and graphic representations of content. Consider using a math word wall that has three parts: key vocabulary, "in your own words" definitions, and a variety of ways to portray a function. For example, multiplication is portrayed by the following symbols: x, *, and ( ).

Number sense, concepts, and operations word wall
The purpose of the mathematics word wall is to identify words and phrases that students need to understand and use so as to make good progress in mathematics. Mathematical language is crucial to children's development of thinking. If students do not have the vocabulary to talk about math concepts and skills, they cannot make progress in understanding these areas of mathematical knowledge. They need to be familiar with mathematical vocabulary and mathematical terms to understand written and spoken instructions. See math word wall resources >

More ideas for word walls in math
Many teachers are familiar with basic word wall strategies including the use of a flashlight (to put the light on words) and a fly swatter (to highlight words). Teachers are also familiar with tested favorites like bingo; I Have, Who Has; and Mind Reader, but they really wanted other ideas. The purpose of this post by Dr. Deborah Wahlstrom is to identify additional ways to use word walls with mathematics content. More math word wall ideas >

Science

Using interactive word walls in science
Science is a vocabulary-intense subject that is dependent on students learning new and often times difficult vocabulary to increase comprehension and help them make connections between and among concepts. When science students are given the opportunity to interact with the vocabulary, they are more likely to remember it.

Ideas for using the words on your wall are only limited by your imagination. Some examples include:

Students categorize and sequence from largest to smallest (cell, bacteria, yeast, tissue, ribosome, organ, organism, organ system, protozoa, virus) Variation: Students are given vocabulary words, and their classmates must arrange them in the correct order and justify the placement.

Students remove words from the wall and make connecting statements about the words. The class can then create a summarizing statement, for example: cells make up tissues, and tissues make up organs.

For more ideas like these, read the full post by Toni Enloe.

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Word Walls | Classroom Strategy | Reading Rockets

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A word wall is a collection of words which are displayed in large visible letters on a wall, bulletin board, or other display surface in a classroom. The word wall is designed to be an interactive tool for students and contains an array of words that can be used during writing and reading.