Reading Group Activities

We are back from Christmas break and the class is ready to go.. (I hope!)  I love teaching for many, many reasons; one of them being that I meet my hug quota for the day by about 9:00am each day!  I love it, and definitely missed all the hugs while I was on break.  :)

One of my favorite times of the day is our Guided Reading time.  We separate into groups and it gives me as the teacher time to work with each group a couple times, teaching/fostering/reinforcing specific reading skills and applying them to our particular text.  The class loves the small groups, the one on one time, and the fun activities that go with our lesson.  

In one group, they were focusing on our "magic e" words that make the vowel say it's own name.  They used Wiki Stiks (a popular favorite) to go find magic e words in their texts.

Below, a group used the reading strategy called Chunky Monkey to decode a word, by finding a word inside of the word that they were already familiar with, then helping them to sound out the rest of the word.  

Pay no attention to my lack of artistic ability here...and don't tell the students, but here is the idea behind the strategy "chunky monkey".  The class cracks me up--I am NO artist, cannot draw to save my life, but they seem to think I need to hold my own personal art show!  They are sweet and I just smile and giggle to myself when I hear them compliment my drawing! :) :) :)

 Spotting the word "an" to help decode the word.

 She found 'ants'!  

In another group, we worked on spelling CVC (consonant/vowel/consonant) words using our knowledge of letter sounds.  This skill is used in reverse when reading.  

Here is another group working on short "a" words.  That was the focus of their particular guided reading book.

The below game was a hit!  We used sticky hands to find particular sight words, then they had to swat it and pick it up with their sticky hands.  

This group was working on how to change your voice based on the particular punctuation at the end of the sentence.  

Here is another group working on CVC words:

In Math, we learned a new favorite game to play with addition reinforcement.  Maybe you can play with your child at home.  It is called Rock, Paper, MATH, and follows the concept of rock, paper, scissors.  You and a partner say, "rock, paper, math", then show 5 fingers or less and they do the same.  The first one to add up your number with theirs, wins.  

That wraps up this post, but we are fast approaching Catholic School's Week and the 100th day of school.  I'm sure we'll have many more pictures that week, so be sure to check back for that.