I once had a student cut off HER PONY TAIL while I was leading a small group. If you are a teacher, you might know how this happened. I was leading a reading group and she was “independently” completing a {boring} worksheet at her desk. I learned a serious lesson that day – MAKE A PLAN FOR HOW TO HANDLE THE WHOLE CLASS WHILE LEADING A READING GROUP. Lesson learned. Here are four tips that can help you avoid a disaster like mine.
Before we begin, let me back up and say do not wait to start your reading groups until everyone is tested. You can start earlier! Once you have finished assessing the lowest 30% of your students, you should start meeting with them. They are going to need the most time you that is possible. Let’s go!
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Teach EVERY step of what you want to see.
- How to transition from the rug to reading spots.
- When to choose books.
- Where to store books.
- Where to read. Can they change spots?
- What do you do if you have a question?
- What do you do if you have to go to the bathroom?
They should absolutely know what reading time LOOKS LIKE, SOUNDS LIKe, and FEELS LIKE. If you happen to have The Daily 5, the sisters lay out a great foundation of teaching these steps in chapter 3.
WHAT DOES THE RESEARCH SAY?
Before I offer suggestions, let’s look at what researchers say are the most effective elements of an independent reading block:
According to Fountas and Pinnell, the absolute best way to increase reading skills is to READ. Offer long stretches of uninterrupted time where students can get lost in a book. Fountas and Pinnell stress that students should read from a variety of text types and genre. Many teachers find that students make the most gains reading texts “at their level”. However, some researchers (Szmusiak, Sibberson, and Koch) assert that using only leveled texts limits students’ learning and engagement, as well as their ability to direct their own learning. They stress the importance of supporting students in making their own book choices, so that what they read is interesting and informative, as well as appropriate in difficulty level. In my own classroom, I give SOME of my students choice in the level of books they read. I know that most of my readers need to be reading at their level. However, I let some of my more advanced readers have some added freedom in level choice.
In the perfect world, your entire class can handle independently reading for 20+ minutes while you work with reading groups. In the REAL world, this is probably not possible for all of your students. My suggestion is to strive for this as an end goal at least some of the time with some of your students.
I love to let students choose any books from our classroom library. But sometimes, I will suggest they connect their reading to my teaching point. I’ve made bookmarks for them as a reminder of how they can apply the teaching point. I find that these reminders are VERY effective. You can make your own bookmarks (or have students make them!). If you’d prefer to save time, you can find complete bookmark sets in my Reading Notebooks.
If your classroom is lucky enough to have access to online technology. There are some great websites that can keep students engaged in meaningful reading tasks. You may want to try some of these:
Book Adventure (www.bookadventure.com – FREE) Kids in grades K-8 can search for books, read them offline, come back to quiz on what they’ve read, and earn prizes for their reading success.
Read Theory (www.readtheory.org – FREE) A K-12 online reading comprehension program that presents assessments to students at a “just right” level. After 20 minutes on ReadTheory, students generate enough data to populate their very own progress reports including insights about their unique reading abilities.
StoryLine (www.storylineonline.net – FREE) Celebrities read books aloud while students listen and read along with the text at the bottom of the video.
Wonderopolis (www.wonderopolis.org/ – FREE) This is an online collection of FUN reading passages (i.e. Why Do Donuts Have Holes). Most passages are written at a 2nd-5th grade level and include response questions that work PERFECTLY in a reading notebook.
Starfall (www.starfall.com – FREE) This is great for younger readers (K, 1st, and some 2nd graders)
RAZ Kids (https://www.kidsa-z.com/ – PAID $109 per classroom) Online guided reading program with interactive ebooks, downloadable books, and reading quizzes.
A reading notebook is a great place for students to write down daily accountability tasks. Entries like this are simple, yet create really effective starting places for conferring discussions.
Formal Notebook Entries – To give your students a little more direction of what you’d like them to focus on in their independent reading, try using prompts. I create the prompt based on our teaching point. Then, I expect the student to show me when they independently apply that teaching point.
Task Cards – Task cards can be amazing in the classroom! They are versatile and can be used in SO many ways. I have discovered that they are perfect in student notebooks. I am talking about task cards that are open-ended, requiring written responses, as opposed to multiple choice answers. By keeping task cards and their responses in reading notebooks, you create a simple organization system. It certainly beats sending them to the recycling bin once finished!
I have created a FREE game of READ-O that is full of accountability tasks! You have a little bit of flexibility with it – are you expecting a blackout? Or is regular horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines? What’s your prize? YOU can make it work perfectly for YOUR classroom! You can download the file by filling in the information below:
OTHER IDEAS
– Try partner reading. If kids are able to handle this behaviorally, it can be a reward to read with a friend.
– Reread the guided reading text. To increase fluency, research suggests students reread texts multiple times. During independent work times, you have a perfect opportunity to squeeze this fluency work in.
– Word Work. If you have students that are struggling to make phonics connections, doing word work (can be related to their spelling words) can be a good activity during this time.
– If you are lucky enough to get parent volunteers, put them to work reading with students.
MAKING IT WORK!
The goal is for you to be able to lead a small group, while the rest of the class is working independently. Getting that to happen, takes a little bit of behind-the-scenes work on your part. Here is how you do it:
– No interruptions! When you are working with a small group, you need your focus to be there. If students are continually coming up to you to ask questions, you need to remodel and reteach expected behaviors. If someone comes up and asks me a question while I am with a group, I quickly redirect and get back to the students in my small group. Then, when the group’s time is up, I either talk to the individual who interrupted me earlier, or I use the last few minutes of the period to go over the procedures together as a whole group.
There you have it! I hope you found the content valuable and will be able to apply it to your own classroom! Let me know if you have any questions on this subject. I will do my best to help you out!
Note: You can create any of the task cards, graphic organizers, or bookmarks that I’ve mentioned here in this post. However, if you prefer, you can try the materials I’ve created for my own classroom.
