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Powtoon.com | See What I Created with Powtoon - EDF3034 Reading and Viewing

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This resource is a worksheet for early primary students learning about comprehension. It is a resource that can be used as an assessment piece for comprehension within a classroom. Without comprehension reading is simply just scanning words on a page. If students did not have comprehension they would not be able to make meaning of the words or sentences within the text (K12Reader, 2018). This can be used for pre and post testing with early primary students. This allows teachers to be able to see where students are at before beginning teaching the topic and then assess where they are at after they finish teaching the topic. This will link in with the Victorian Curriculum outcome 'identify features of text such as events and characters and have the ability to retell the story' (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2015).

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This is a resource is a resource that can be used by teachers to be used for students to learn about phonic and phonological awareness. They are printable books that can be used for assessments for students on phonics and phonological awareness to see how far a students knowledge grows. These books are resources that can be used in order to scaffold the students knowledge. It can use the zone of proximal development. It can start off with finding where the students is at with their phonics and start to push their learning further by building on their knowledge with higher difficulty books and texts (Culatta, 2011). In the Victorian Curriculum it states that students have the ability to recognise upper and lower case letters along with their sounds. Students should also be able to blend the sounds together to make words (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority). This links very closely to what these texts assess and develop.

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SPELD SA Phonic Books are free to use

The SPELD SA Phonic Books were created to provide low cost / free resources to support the educational needs of children, young adults, and those who have English as a second language. Different versions of the same book can be used online, downloaded onto a computer, iPad, tablet or printed as a book. The books suit a variety of ages and abilities. Please use these books at your discretion, accounting for your child's ability, age or need.

Learning to read using phonic books

The best way to teach someone to read, regardless of age, is to start by systematically and explicitly teaching the relationship between letters and the sounds in English. The challenge is often to provide the learner with suitable texts that they can read independently from the start, using the letter-sound knowledge they have been taught.

The SPELD SA Phonic Books use the sequence of sounds used in the Jolly Phonics synthetic phonics program, which teaches 42 main sounds in English and how those sounds are represented as single letters and a combination of letters. Students say and blend these letter-sounds together to hear words. This is called decoding. Initially students may need practice decoding single words and then move onto phonic books.

The goal of reading is to engage with the written word, be it to find out information, to access different realities or immerse yourself in someone else's world. However, it is important that while a student is learning to read that they are given decodable phonic books to establish and secure their reading skills. While the words in the SPELD SA Phonic Books are deliberately limited to the letter-sounds in the sequence, each book includes questions and discussion points to encourage the reader to relate the content to their own knowledge and experience.

The SPELD SA Phonic Books Structure

The letter-sounds taught in the Jolly Phonics sequence are grouped into sets, as outlined below.

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SPELD SA Phonic Books are free to use The SPELD SA Phonic Books were created to provide low cost / free resources to support the educational needs of children, young adults, and those who have English as a second language.

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This resource is a blog for teachers on seven different strategies to use when teaching comprehension to students. It discusses the different strategies in depth for what is best for each students. These strategies include monitoring comprehension, metacognition, graphic and semantic organises, answering questions, generating questions, recognising story structure, and summarising. When teaching these strategies it is important to use explicit teaching techniques when explaining the strategies and how to use them. These techniques include direct explanation, modelling, guided practice and application, using this allows the students to understand exactly when they should use the strategies and why (Adler, 2017). This then links closely with the Victorian Curriculum Foundation level outcome that states that students will be able to use comprehension strategies to understand and discuss texts listened to, viewed or read (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2015).

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Adapted from Adler, C.R. (Ed). 2001. Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read, pp. 49-54. National Institute for Literacy. Retrieved Nov. 1, 2007, from http://www.nifl.gov/partnershipforreading/publications/reading_first1text.html.

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Seven Strategies to Teach Students Text Comprehension

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Comprehension strategies are conscious plans - sets of steps that good readers use to make sense of text. Comprehension strategy instruction helps students become purposeful, active readers who are in control of their own reading comprehension. These seven strategies have research-based evidence for improving text comprehension.

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This resource is a paper worksheet that can be given to early years or early primary students. This worksheet can be used as a part of an assessment for concept of print. This could be one that is used as the students pre and post tests for this particular topic. Using this as a pre and post test allows the teachers to know where the students are at with their knowledge on concepts of print in the beginning and then how far their learning has come after the topic has been completely taught. It is the best way to assess learning and cognitive skills (Skidmore, 2019). This then will help achieve outcomes within the English Victorian Curriculum such as 'understanding concepts about print about how books and texts work and know what some features of the print are' (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2015).

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This resource is a pack of posters to be used around the classroom in an early years or early primary setting. Each poster has a different concept on it for students to look at. Having these posters around the classroom reminds students about the concepts and supports them in their learning. Having posters and visual stimuli for students is highly important especially in a young age. When there is visual stimuli in a classroom the retention of information is a lot higher, this is due to the brain being a processor for images (Breeze, 2015). This means that when having these posters around the classrooms students will be able to recognise what they mean and apply them to their learning within the classroom.

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Print Concepts | Kindergarten | Preschool | Posters for Emerging Readers

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Teach emerging readers about the parts of a book with these 10 Posters. What are Print Concepts? Concepts about print involve understanding the difference between letters, words, punctuation and directionality. It is an awareness of print in our everyday environment. Understanding concepts of print...

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This resource is an activity to assist students in developing the concept of following words from left to right when reading. It is a live teaching resource that can be used within the classroom. This activity is a great opportunity for building on a child's knowledge and using Vygotsky's zone of proximal development. This activity allows the child to have the ability to recognise a nursey rhyme that they already know and then building on their knowledge and pushing them further in their learning by pushing them beyond their knowledge of the nursey rhyme and adding the knowledge of where the rhyme starts and finishes and other concept of print knowledge. In order for this to be in the Vygotsky's zone of proximal develop the teacher needs to be involved and to help push the child further within their learning during this activity (Mcleod, 2019).

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This resource is a blog that can be used by teachers to learn more about what to do within their classroom when it comes to teaching students about Concepts of print. It goes through each component of text and what the best ways of doing so is. Mrs Richardson discusses the importance of modelling within a classroom (Richardson, 2016). Using modelling should always be done in the child's natural environment so it is important to do this in a school environment as well as at home (Rocky Bay, 2010). This blog post helps teachers understand the topic for themselves as well as finding best ways to teach the students in the best way for them.

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One of the most important and basic early literacy skills for our little readers is mastering concepts about print. This is the "knowledge of print awareness and book handling skills." For many students, this comes natural, but for the other half, it does not. I see this in my own child who we adopted. While our biological child has been read to since before he was born, our sweet girl was not. I'll never forget the first night I read to her-she had no clue how to hold the book, turn the pages, and showed no interest at all.

I love this quote by Marie Clay.
"It is not really a question of how much they know; it is more a matter of what personal experience they have had with print, what they have noticed and what they have ignored." (Clay, 2002)
Mastering concepts about print is necessary. Children learn how print works, how the spoken language looks in print-how the english "code" works, so to speak. Let's talk about the basics.

Concepts about print include book concepts, reading concepts, letter concepts, word concepts, and punctuation. There are many different versions of assessments available and I have given anything from a basic one with four simple questions about book concepts to a more complex one that digs deeper all the way to punctuation.

Identifying the cover of the book

Identifying the back of the book

Identifying the title

Where to begin reading with the book closed

Where to begin reading on the page

Knows text is read from left to right

When to turn the page

How to know when I am done reading

Identify 1 letter

Identify 1 word

Identify the first letter in a word

Identify the last letter in a word

Identify 1 sentence

How many words are in a sentence

Can track text with 1-to-1 correspondence

Identify a capital letter

Identify a lowercase letter

Identify a period

Identify a question mark

Identify an exclamation mark

Identify a quotation mark

Identify a comma

How and When to ModelChildren will learn concepts a bout print mostly from being presenting with opportunities to read and write throughout the day. Balanced literacy naturally lends itself to providing opportunities for concepts about print to be taught explicitly and modeled in the classroom. For example, you can model it daily during shared reading with a big book-pointing out letters, words, sentences, where to begin reading, the title, front cover, etc. During interactive read aloud, you can model many of the concepts-title, front cover, back, etc. As you share the pen during interactive writing with the students, you can emphasize text features that need to be included. During word work time, discuss how you are using letters to build words and can then use words to build sentences. Tell students, "When we talk we use sentences." During independent writing time, you can easily discuss student's writing and pointing out features as they share their writing or as you conference with them.
A few other things you can do...

count the words in sentences

use every day words and phrases that the students see to show them 1 letter, 1 word, or 1 sentence

use dot stickers to place them under each word to help with tracking text

write sentences on sentence strips and cut them apart so that the students can build them back focusing on the capital letter and period for the beginning and the end

encourage students to face the front of the books the same way int eh classroom library or their book boxes during literacy stations

If you are looking to get started with assessing concepts about print, my favorite resource is An Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement by Marie Clay. "...Teachers will be better prepared to advance any child's understand when they already know what children are attending to." (Clay, 2002). Below is an affiliate link to the wonderful book!

While it broke my teacher-mommy heart that my little girl had no clue what to do with a book, I knew she just need experiences and exposure. After only a few weeks, she caught on to the basics. Now she could sit and listen to books and help read them all day long! The same is true in the classroom-they just need experiences and to be read to!

Do you make a point to teach concepts about print to your little readers? Do you assess these skill? What does it look like in your classroom? I'd love to hear!

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Teaching Concepts About Print - Mrs. Richardson's Class

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One of the most important and basic early literacy skills for our little readers is mastering concepts about print. This is the "knowledge of print awareness and book handling skills." For many students, this comes natural, but for the other half, it does not. I see this in my own child who we adopted.

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This resource is a Youtube video discussing how to assess students on the concept of print. It shows the questions that teachers should be asking the students in order for them to learn and be assessed. It shows how to go over the different components of a book with them as well as the components of the texts. It is said that when doing this it guides you as a teaching in what sort of behaviours and the required questions students may need or use when reading (Hill, 2012. p.154). This again links closely with the Victorian English Curriculum especially the descriptions on identifying key features of a text such as the front cover and punctuation (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2015).

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This pin is an activity to assist students in learning the differences between a letter, a word, and a sentence. Hill (2012, p. 164) states that when children begin to learn how to read they develop their understanding of how texts and print work. When children begin to read they need to understand the concept of a letter, word, and a sentence in order to fully understand the print and text itself. This activity is aimed at the younger aged students such as foundation or level one students, this is due to the Victorian Curriculum having descriptions in both foundation and level one about understanding that texts are made up of words and groups of words that make meaning (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2015).

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This resource is activities that are given to students that allow them to explore drawing conclusions and making inferences. It includes a small story or some information and is followed by questions for the students to answer as well as an activity that they can do for an extended activity. According to the National Reading Panel (2000) having strong comprehension and being able to answer questions and make inferences about a story or about given information improves students reading achievements especially during schooling years. This strongly connects to the level one comprehensions curriculum 'uses comprehension strategies to build literal and inferred meaning about key events, ideas and information in texts that they listen to, view and read by drawing on growing knowledge of context, text structures and language features' (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2015). That is exactly what these task cards do for the students.

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Being able to draw conclusions and make inferences is an important comprehension strategy for students to understand.

This teaching resource includes:

five comprehension task cards; including a text to read and accompanying questions

an enrichment task; where students use their creativity to make a product related to each text

question worksheets for each text

answers for teachers.

Resource Pack This resource is part of the Comprehension Strategy Teaching Resource Pack - Draw Conclusions and Make Inferences. Download this resource and 31 other resources in the complete pack. View the pack...

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Comprehension Task Cards - Draw Conclusions and Make Inferences Teaching Resource - Teach Starter

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Being able to draw conclusions and make inferences is an important comprehension strategy for students to understand. This teaching resource includes: five comprehension task cards; including a text to read and accompanying questions an enrichment task; where students use their creativity to make a product related to each text question worksheets for each text answers for teachers.

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This resource is a YouTube video of a first grade class participating in a shared reading experience. As the class read, the teacher interrupts to scaffold the students' learning to consider different aspects of text comprehension such as the characters and how they are feeling. This resource can be used as a guide for educators as it demonstrates Vygotsky's zone of proximal development, which is the 'area between a person's current level of independent functioning and what they can do with appropriate support' (Woolfolk and Margetts, 2016, p. 97) to encourage children to explore text inference through teacher structured cues.

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This resource is an activity to assist students in the development of phonological awareness. Hill (2012, p. 135) describes the importance of having strong phonological awareness to promote reading as 'an awareness to phonemes is the key to understanding the logic of the alphabetic principle.' This activity can be completed with level one students as the Victorian Curriculum states that students of this level should be able to 'recognise short vowels, common long vowels and consonant digraphs, and consonant blends' (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2015), therefore they should have also developed an understanding on word knowledge such as syllables and rhymes.

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"Bingo!" It's a word I think we probably have all said after a round of the popular game. We can also use the classic game to build rhyming skills. Yep, rhyming bingo is not only fun, but it's also educational. Phonological awareness activities are a great way to get a young child ready to read.

GETTING READY TO PLAY RHYMING BINGO

Full Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

Materials Needed: alphabet bingo sheets (free printable below) and counters (candies, buttons, crackers, etc.)

Just print out the bingo sheets. I've included 8 FREE printable bingo boards (see below) that are in color. Each board is different in the set. You could laminate the boards if you want to use them for years to come.

Give each child a handful of counters. We used animal crackers. You could also use counting cubes, candy or buttons.

PLAYING RHYMING BINGO

Have the kids cover up their free spot in the middle of the board.

Call out a word. Each child should place a marker on a picture that rhymes with the word called. Get five in a row or column and call, "BINGO" to win.

For example, if you call the word fox, the child would cover up the picture of the box.

You could make up your own words or use this list of words to call out.

fox, car, throw, power, wig, plane, bent, rake, blue, hat, cone, bite, house, pie, stuck, bear, funny, bun, me, goat, racket, paw, log, and yarn.

GET THE BOARDS AS A THANK YOU GIFT FOR BECOMING A GROWING BOOK BY BOOK SUBSCRIBER

Would you like to be a part of the Growing Book by Book community? Get time-saving literacy resources and offers to help you reach all your growing readers. As a thank you gift, you'll get the Rhyming Bingo Boards. Click the button below to join.

A LITTLE RHYMING READING

Keep building those rhyming skills with this fun rhyming book list.-> CLICK HERE TO SEE THE RHYMING BOOK LIST

MORE RHYMING ACTIVITIES

And, have even more rhyming adventures with these activities.-> RHYMING ACTIVITIES

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"Bingo!" It's a word I think we probably have all said after a round of the popular game. We can also use the classic game to build rhyming skills. Yep, rhyming bingo is not only fun, but it's also educational. Phonological awareness activities are a great way to get a young child ready to read.

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This book can also be used to explore phonological awareness through its use of word pattern and rhyme. The Early Years Learning Framework (Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, 2009, p. 46) describe the ability to 'listen and respond to sounds and patterns in speech, stories and rhyme' as a learning outcome for children to become effective learners and communicators. The story can be read aloud, and the students can be encouraged to join in through predicting the consecutive rhyming word which is essentially a method to promote reading fluency and early reading behaviours (Department of Education and Training, 2019).

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The first activity of the YouTube video is a task that can be completed by foundation to level one students as it requires children to identify short vowels (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2015). Hill (2012, p. 247) describes short vowels as being more difficult to recognise than consonants as they are sounds that are made in the mouth with no contact made to the teeth, lips or tongue. Due to its difficult nature the activity supports the use multi-sensory learning as it involves hearing the word/sound of the vowel (listening), seeing the vowel in its written form (viewing) and placing an object in the cup of the described vowel (doing). Shams and Seitz (2008, p. 2) reinforce this view as they argue 'multi-sensory training promotes more effective learning of information than uni-sensory training.'

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This resource is a paid online reading program/app that provides children ages three and above a variety of reading activities. This resource in particular focuses on learning phonics which is essentially a 'strategy for word identification' through 'sound letter-relationships' (Hill, 2012, p. 241). This resource was used in my recent placement to consolidate previous learning on different phonemic rules. This supports the information processing theory as it encourages students to encode and retain learning into their long-term memory through re-visitation of previous learning in their working memory (McInerney, 2014).

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Eggy Phonics Apps | Phonics Games and Activities

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Phonics is a vital part of learning to read - Eggy Phonics makes learning fun and motivating for ages 3+, with interactive games and activities. Download today!

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This YouTube video is a resource aimed for educators that demonstrates one example of how 'blending' in phonics can be explained.  The educator in this video decodes the words into individual letters/sounds before reading it all together to create a fluent word. This lesson can be conducted with students in a Foundation level of English as the Victorian curriculum discusses how students of this grade should begin to recognise sounds of common letters and have the ability to 'blend sounds associated with letters when reading consonant-vowel-consonant words' (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2015).

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Drive-Thru Blending in First Grade: Practicing Early Decoding Skills

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This resource demonstrates how to make a phonics flip book which can then be used by students to create/read/decode words and non-sense words. Rossum and Bosma (2017) discuss exploring nonsense words as an effective tool to improve reading fluency as it encourages students to practice decoding and blending letter sounds to create new words. It ensures students are 'relying on letter-sound relationships' rather than their memory of previously learned words (Rossum and Bosma, 2017, p. 8).

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This resource is an activity that that promotes the discussion of reading comprehension. Hill (2012), describes this as the ability to make meaning of the text through the print, images, layout and design (p. 215).  The activity is supported by Smith's (2010) study on the role of peers in children's learning which discusses students as being  'capable peer tutors' (p. 3) as it requires students to work together to analyse different elements of the text such as the setting, themes and main idea.

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This resource provides educators with different and creative ways to explore making text predictions. For example, students can create a case file that asks them to to make a prediction on what they think the text will be about, including what clues they are given before describing what actually happens in the text. This activity supports Bruner's constructivist learning theory as it describes the process in which learners construct new ideas from previous learning. The theory suggests learners will select and analyse information to create hypotheses and make decisions regarding new ideas and new learning (Smith, 2002). This relates to reading comprehension as it requires students to analyse clues in the title and selected images to hypothesise the main idea of the text.

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We, as teachers, are always stopping while reading to ask students what is going to happen next. We want students to be able to stop and monitor their understanding of the text. This will, in turn, help with their comprehension of the story. I wanted to stop in today to share some new resources I am using in my classroom to help students with this strategy.

I always like to start by introducing the strategy of the week with an anchor chart. Did you know you can print poster-size anchor charts from Adobe??!! This anchor chart is in my Making Predictions Pack, along with the directions on how to print posters from home or school. I also print mini-anchor charts for my students to put in their reading journals. We, together, create our anchor chart for the week. I usually use a read aloud as an example to add to our anchor chart so that I can model using the strategy. Students complete their own little anchor charts with me. This, my friends, is such a powerful tool for my students to anchor their thinking and take ownership of our anchor charts. :)

I also have this little poster I hang as a reminder during read to self and partner for students.

Students can be very apprehensive about making predictions. We know that they do not want to guess the wrong prediction, so it's important to have that conversation with them that it's okay to not always be right. We want them to feel comfortable using clues from the text to make their best predictions, along with their schema. Sometimes it's fun to be surprised by the author! I know that this book is perfect for encouraging students to make predictions in that safe environment.

Enemy Pie by Derek Munson is a darling book that not only is perfect for practicing the strategy of making predictions, but it also teaches the importance of kindness. I like to stop during the reading and ask students what they think is in Enemy Pie? Do you think he's really going to give it to his enemy? I have students record their prediction on top of the pie in the craft below. You may want them to write their prediction with a pen, marker, or crayon, because they often want to change their prediction after finding out what actually happened. ;)

After reading, they record what was actually in the pie underneath the flap. It's such a cute story and fun little craft that your students will love!

At the end of the lesson, I showed this Pixar clip of Ormie the Pig. I stopped at 2:38 and asked students to predict whether or not Ormie was going to get the cookies this time. I gave them the option of a picture or words.

They recorded their prediction on an exit ticket and placed it in the Prediction Pail. I found this idea at Kindergarten Boom Boom. It was just adorable and super fun!

You can click the image below for this freebie label for you and your teammates.

These are the exit tickets I used throughout the week. I switched it up each day and we threw them in the prediction pail or clipped on our round up clips.

I also have students participate in a cooperative group activity. If time is an issue for you, you could have them do this during small group instruction or even during centers. It would also be a great early finisher activity students could easily grab and work on.

I create 3 or 4 case files like the one below and fill each with graphic organizers and a book or passage.

Students read the book or passage inside and complete the graphic organizer together. The first time I do this unit, I like to use all picture books. When I do this unit again, I might vary it with other books and passages. The great thing about my predictions pack is that you can use it over and over throughout the year. There are too many activities to fit in one week.

I like to give them a page to stop at with a prediction question in the file. It gives them a purpose and keeps them focused. It's the "CASE" they have to solve! After reading, they record what actually happened.

I also use this graphic organizer all throughout the week. I love to stick them in a Smart Pal to reuse again and again.

Another day, just to switch it up, we used this interactive notebook template to record predictions about If You Took a Mouse to the Movies by Laura Numeroff.

The following day, we read If You Give a Pig a Pancake by Laura Numeroff focusing a little bit more on the clues students use from the text or illustrations to make predictions.

These little mini-booklets are great to throw in a Read to Self tub for students to practice the strategy independently.

And finally, my littles LOVE bookmarks! Like, can't get enough! These will help them remember to stop and predict while reading independently.

You can check out this unit by clicking the images below. You can also check out my Interactive Anchor Charts below if you think that is something that might benefit you. It makes it much easier for me to have my anchor charts ready to print and go each week.

Thanks for stopping by, friends! Have a great break!

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We, as teachers, are always stopping while reading to ask students what is going to happen next. We want students to be able to stop and monitor their understanding of the text. This will, in turn, help with their comprehension of the story.

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This resource is a blog that can be used by educators to change how they set-up at home reading tasks. The resource discusses students completing at home comprehensive reading logs to analyse text inference without parent or teacher interruption. This activity supports the 'gradual release of responsibility model' which describes the 'teacher shift[ing] from assuming all the responsibility for performing a task … to a situation in which the students assume all of the responsibility' (Fisher, 2008).  This model is an effective approach for improving literacy development, particularly reading comprehension as it allows students to create their own understandings on the explored text.

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I have always assigned nightly reading. Why? I don't assign nightly reading because I want to give students "reading homework." I don't assign nightly reading because we're trying to win a pizza party if we meet a school-wide goal of four billion minutes. Instead, I assign nightly reading because I wish to instill a habit and a love of literacy in my students. I assign nightly reading because it's good for kids.

Research shows us that students who read frequently are not only stronger readers, but they have stronger math skills, too. (See this article from Edudemic.com)

Reading twenty minutes a day exposes students to roughly 1.8 million vocabulary words a year. (readdbq.org)

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, reading regularly positively affects the brain's cognitive abilities.

So yes, I assign nightly reading because I know that it benefits my students in more ways than I could ever list in a blog post.

...but I need to admit something. (Cue dramatic music.)

In my early days of teaching, I failed my students when it came to nightly reading. Today, I want to share what I didn't know at the time, the mistakes I made, and the changes I've implemented. These positive changes have led to a smooth nightly reading "system" that my students (and families) nurture and love.

Mistake #1: I Assigned Specific Book Titles

When I first started teaching, I used to have a parent volunteer fill each child's book baggie with a book from their independent guided reading basket every morning. The parent would fill the bag and send it home with the child. When I look back on this instructional decision, I want to cringe! EEK! Encouraging a love of reading is never going to happen if students don't have a choice during independent reading.

It's important that I explain to you that now, my students choose the book they read each night. I do guide them to choosing a book within their independent reading level, but I never assign a specific book title that they have to read. I give them a range of baskets to choose from- including baskets below their independent reading level. (It's also important to note that the picture above makes up only a small part of my library. The bulk of my books are sorted by genre and topics.) If a child wants to read a book that is beyond his or her independent level, I'm never going to say no. This is especially important at the beginning of the year when our students are still learning how to find books that are just right them. In these situations, I may ask the child to take home TWO books that night- their book of choice and a book that he or she chooses that is within the independent reading level. In this way, the child can read whatever book he or she wants to that night, but if the child chooses to abandon the harder book, he has another book that that is a good fit, too. If the child asks me if he or she can read their library book for their nightly reading, or a book at home, or a book that's on my read-aloud bookshelf- Yes! Yes! Yes! My goal is for my students to choose a book they want to read and are excited to learn about. Having the ability to choose which book they want to read is critical to the success I've had in fostering a learning habit that I pray becomes one of the best parts of their day.

Mistake #2: I Used Traditional Reading Logs

When I first started teaching, my students would read their assigned book and write the title and date of the book on their reading log. The end. That's it. Did they ever look at that reading log again at the end of the month? Probably not. Did getting a sticker at the end of the month stir up their hearts and make them avid readers after they left my classroom in June? Not at all. So why did I continue to use them? Since I'm not a big believer in dishing out consequences to six-year-olds when homework isn't completed, I can't really make an argument that I used them for accountability purposes. Also, since we already agreed that these logs were probably not framed and put on the mantel at home at the end of each month, I can't really say that I used them so that they could go down memory lane and "revisit" all of the books they read. Since I am being completely open and honest, I think I used them because that's what I had always seen other teachers use.

However, I can now look back and see that traditional reading logs were not making an impact on my students' reading skills.

Mistake #3: I Required a Parent Signature

Oops! I almost forgot to share an important detail about our traditional reading logs. After my students filled out the title and date column, a family member or guardian had to sign the log. Every morning, I would then have a conversation with at least a few of my kids that went like this:

Me: "Why isn't your reading log signed?" Child: "I don't know." or "My mom forgot." or "I read, but Dad didn't sign it."

It also never failed that these students' faces fell when they once again didn't have their log signed. You see, I learned a lot during that first year of teaching (as we all do). I learned that the parent signature wasn't helping my students become better readers. Now, some may argue that without requiring a parent signature, we aren't "teaching" our families the importance of reading with their child. Some may argue that without requiring a parent signature, we aren't holding parents "accountable" for their responsibility for literacy in the home.

Here's what I know.

I know that for a lot of my students, they get home and find an older brother or sister to care for them instead of an adult. Moms and dads often work the third shift. I know for that some of my students, it is a struggle to get dinner together, much less find their folder and track down a family member to sign it. I know that giving a consequence, or not giving a child a reward because an adult at home did not sign a reading log is unfair to that child. Period.

How I Revamped Our Nightly Reading Routine

Instead of judging a child's home reading habits by whether or not a parent signed a reading log or not, let's just focus on the child and the meaning he or she is constructing from the book. Even better, let's give a purpose to the reading log so parents who ARE reading with their child can just ENJOY the book together and know what reading strategy the child is working on at school.

Let me show you how I revamped our nightly reading system and the changes I made:

Change #1: Our Reading Logs Have a Purpose

With a traditional reading log, recording the title and the date didn't even require my students to open the book. I wanted to create intentional reading logs that would:

Help my students reflect on a specific strategy or skill that we were working on within the classroom

Provide an easy way for parents and guardians to see what their children are working on at school

NOT take more than a minute or two to complete, therefore keeping the focus on reading for enjoyment

Work for ALL levels of readers and writers due to differentiated formats

Teach responsibility by creating something my students could complete independently

I created a HUGE pack of "renovated" reading logs that focus on one comprehension area, skill, or strategy at a time. Each log asks the child to read, write the title of the book, and then either write, draw, reflect, or record something related to the week's focus. My students get their logs on Mondays and they turn them in on Fridays. They complete one box each night. For example, on the "My Interesting Words Reading Log", the student simply jots down some interesting words he or she found in the book. In the "Main Idea Reading Log", the child jots down the main idea or topic of what he or she read. There are also versions that allow the students to draw or illustrate their understanding. The logs contain a huge variety of options! Each week, I simply pick out the log that works on a skill we have been practicing. We also revisit the logs frequently throughout the year.
UPDATE: Since writing this blog post, I've also added a DIGITAL READING LOG version to my store HERE.
Here are some of the included reading logs:
Below are some example pictures of the Reading Logs I created:

My Favorite Part

Setting and Character

Nonfiction Text Features

Main Idea and Details

Retelling

Visualization

Author and Illustrator

Cause and Effect

Compare and Contrast

My Mental Image

Questioning Log

Genre Log

My Fiction or Nonfiction Log

Author's Purpose

...and SO MANY MORE!

I don't penalize students for not completing their reading logs. If they complete all four boxes at the end of the week, they get extra Class Dojo points, which they can "spend" on various rewards they get to choose from. If they come to school without having completed their reading log, they are allowed to fill it out in the morning, if they choose. (Extra Information: I always get asked, "Why don't you have a fifth box for Fridays?" I encourage weekend reading and they are of course encouraged to take books home over the week, but we just don't take home a log. I really don't believe in requiring anything over the weekend because I believe it's a time for family, so I will not be adding a fifth box to this resource. However, you could print it double-sided if you needed to.)

Some teachers use these reading logs for small groups, independent reading, or partner reading. You certainly do not need to use them as a take-home resource! There are tons of possibilities for these intentional reading logs!

Change #2: We Focused On Meaning- Not Signatures

Requiring a parent signature as part of the way a reading log is deemed "completed" did nothing but separate my students into two groups: those whose parents and guardians remembered to diligently sign the reading log and those whose parents and guardians didn't sign the reading log. What was I teaching my students? I was teaching them that a parent signature = nightly reading success. Don't get me wrong. I believe in teaching responsibility to my students with my entire being- but I think there are other ways to do that at school that doesn't put a child who comes from a chaotic home situation at an unfair advantage. Remember, I am not working with freshmen in high school. I'm working with six and seven-year-olds. (Psst! They are still babies in the grand scheme of life!)

So, instead of "evaluating" a reading log by the number of parent signatures it contained, we VALUE our reading logs by the DISCUSSIONS we can have from them and the MEANING we acquired from the books we read. These logs make nightly reading about the child- not the parents.

Change #3: Keep It Quick and Simple

It was important to me that these new reading logs were kept simple, quick, and easy. We want our students' time to be invested in the book and the enjoyment of reading. We don't want their nightly reading time to be spent laboring over writing a summary that takes them so long to write that it cuts into the time they spend reading.

I love when I can look at these quick and simple reading logs each morning and be able to say to a student, "Wow! I can see that the book you read last night took place on a farm. Did you love learning about the farm?" when I glance at the child's "My Setting and Character Reading Log". With just a quick illustration or a simple but intentional sentence, I can get students to remember what they read the night before and be able to start TALKING about it with me!

I start using these reading logs right away with my first graders! For the first few weeks of our nightly reading program, I use the "My Favorite Part Reading Log". It allows students to simply draw a picture of their favorite part of the story each night. I then move on to the "Setting and Character Reading Log", and then the "Retelling Reading Log". As we work our way through other comprehension skills, the log they take home every Monday changes. There are even weeks when I throw out a few different reading logs and the students can choose which log they want to work on that week! These simple and quick logs have made a BIG difference in my primary nightly reading system.

Where Can I Find These Reading Logs?

I want you to be able to try these Skill-Based Reading Logs out with your students! If you click on my reading logs link found HERE, or on the picture below, you can find these in my shop. I have even better news, too! If you click on the Preview Download button for this resource in my shop, you can get one of the reading log templates for FREE!

NEW DIGITAL EDITION!

I have recently added a new extension pack to my shop: a DIGITAL, PAPERLESS version of my Reading Logs! You can find the DIGITAL READING LOGS by clicking HERE, or on the image below. These reading logs will open in Google Slides and can be typed into by the students. There is also a tutorial that shows them how to draw pictures on their digital logs. Please note that the digital version is a separate purchase from the PDF printable version.

If you're still reading this blog post, it's obvious that you, like me, understand the value in nightly reading. You also understand that constructing meaning from what we read is more important than the number of books we list on a log. I'm going to also bet that you agree with me that we should focus on developing great independent reading habits instead of worrying about things that are truly beyond our control (such as a reading log that isn't signed). I'm grateful that you have taken the time to allow me to share how my nightly reading "system" has changed over the years. I love watching my students grow as readers over the school year, and I hope this post helps you as you reflect on your own classroom procedures and the vivacious readers that you are nurturing!

Please feel free to pin the photographs below to your Pinterest boards in order to save this post for future reference or to share it with your colleagues and friends. Happy Reading! -Miss DeCarbo

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Reading Logs for Comprehension and Nightly Reading - Miss DeCarbo

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Learn how these reading logs build comprehension skills during my students' nightly reading routine! Students practice the comprehension skills and strategies we learned at school using their take-home books. The focus is on reading for meaning- not getting a parent signature!