Mrs. Wheeler's First Grade Tidbits: Weekly Guided Reading Update

Hi, friends! I hope you enjoyed your weekend! Today I am writing to tell you about a new weekly series that I am starting: Weekly Guided Reading Update. I get a lot of emails about guided reading time and I thought it would be great to have a dedicated day each week to post about what my kids have been learning during our time together! This is the first post, so without further ado, here we go!

I love being organized! Organization is key for running efficient guided reading groups. When you have all of your materials at your fingertips, you can plan quickly and efficiently. I keep all of my materials for guided reading in binders. This includes hard copies of any worksheets/masters and all games, cards, etc...I hole punch the worksheets and I use clear sheet protectors for the games, cards, and other activities.Having my materials organized in binders also lets me plan "on the go." If I have to leave early for ~~a meeting~~ Happy Hour on Friday and don't want to plan that day, I can grab the binders I need and head out the door!

Currently, I am meeting with a Level D group and a Level I/J/K group {due to logistics, I often combine groups of similar levels. I try to teach activities from each of the three levels I/J/K. I also pull books in the J range and bump it up to K books towards the end of the quarter}.

My other students who are not in group with me this quarter are meeting with an intervention support staff member or doing independent work. And now for the most frequently emailed question I get: "What are the other kids doing when you are running groups?" They are doing 2 things: During my first guided reading group {D}, the rest of the class is going to literacy centers. During my second guided reading group {J/K}, they are quiet reading at their seats. Each group is 20 minutes, which means literacy centers last 20 minutes and quiet reading time lasts 20 minutes. I have 6 centers {sight word center, listening center, 2 word work centers, computer center, and Ipad center}. *We just got 3 Ipads each! Praise the Lord! The kids and I needed some technology in our lives!!!

I will tell you that getting your kids to 1. stay on task and 2. not interrupt you takes some major practice at the beginning of the year. I don't start guided reading until the second quarter for this exact reason. I spend the first 9 weeks training my kids how to behave during center and quiet reading time. This is KEY!

Here what's going on with my current groups this week:

Level D Group

We are hitting our sight words daily as a warm up...daily with any group below level G at this point in the year. After we've read our book, we've been practicing blends in some way, shape, or form. Here we are practicing blends in context of simple sentences.

Levels J/K Group

We are diving deep into non-fiction this week. Some of my favorite things to do with this are: sticky note schema charts and graphic organizers. We're also learning about idioms! These are so much fun! The kids have a blast with them!