I’m linking up with Leigh this week!
Our topic for today is…
WHOLE GROUP INSTRUCTION
During my whole group instruction time in reading, I usually bring the students over to my carpeted area and I read the story of the week to them. One of the things that I’ve started to do to deepen my read aloud time with my students is…
You guessed it…sticky notes! 🙂
I read the story of the week before I read it to the class and then I add sticky notes to the edges of the pages of the story to remind myself of questions that I want to ask the children as I’m reading.
I have found over the years that I give the children real ‘meat’ to think about during the read aloud time when I think about questions before I read to them as opposed to just using what the basal gives me…or modeling think alouds.
Frankly, when I am reading to first graders, there’s not a lot that I’m really wondering, because the texts are so obvious. It’s hard to model ‘depth of thought’ with ‘Sam can go’ or ‘Sam runs fast.’
That’s why, when we were given the new common core initiatives to consider, I went straight to the exemplar texts. Now, you wnat to talk about meat? THOSE oral read alouds leave room for MEAT! 🙂
I’ve written a few units using them.
To start out the year though, I needed something a little less rigorous to help the kids grow to the heights the CCSS are looking for.
One of the first units I’ll be using is one I wrote on Quick As A Cricket.
Now, this is not a complex text ALL YEAR long for the students, but…it will be fairly rigorous in the first nine weeks, which is when I plan to use it.
During our whole group time, the students and I will take a close look at the language that the author uses and then we’ll extend our learning by responding to the text in writing. I even updated the pack recently to provide a resource for small group instruction.
Can’t wait to read about what you do for whole group intruction! 🙂
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