Small Group Binders {Organization and Ideas!}

Every year it seems I start out the year with a goal... this year, it's ORGANIZATION.  I'm a pretty organized person but, when I moved classrooms earlier this summer, I weeded out SO much stuff.  It was NUTS!  Having less stuff is terrifying to me.  I love my stuff.  I need my stuff!  But, I also hadn't touched much of that stuff since moving to 3rd grade 3 years ago so, it was time for it to GO.

In my quest to become uber organized with my remaining stuff, I have created two binders that organize many of my reading passages that connect to standards.  I use these things when teaching my small groups.

Hence, my RL and RI small group binders were born!  This post shows off some of what's inside and gives nods to some of my TpT favs!

So, here are my two binders...

Each one is full of page protectors (my addiction!) and has sticky note tabs to denote the sections for each CCSS standard...

At the start of each section is a full sheet that spells out the "I can" statements for each standard...

And, then, come the goodies!

The RL binder has the passages from my small group packs-

And reading passages from Readworks.org which, if you aren't signed up for, you need to!  The top page below is from ReadWorks and the bottom is from my 3rd grade small group pack.

That is primarily what makes up the RL binder- Readworks and pages from my RL pack.

My RI binder has some AMAZING passages from Hello Literacy...

And several of the folding books from this Mailbox pack.  I copy these and use them all the time for informational reading in my small groups.  Super high interest!  It seems like it may be out of print, but you can click the pic for more info!

I also have passages from my cause and effect pack...

And this "Zombie" pack from The Tattooed Teacher is a FAVORITE of my kiddos!

These binders will be a work in progress as I add to them during the year... but they are both off to a GREAT start!

How do you organize for small groups?

Small Group Sunday- What We're Doing This Week!

I don't know about you... but I LOVE teaching small group reading!  I'm so excited to share what we'll be working on this week as it's one of my FAVORITE standards to work on.

We're going to be working on RL 3.7- how illustrations work to help tell a story.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE using wordless picture books to teach this so, we'll be "reading" The Farmer and the Clown by Marla Frazee.  This is a GREAT story and I can't wait to share it with my groups.  We'll also be creating "Thoughtmarks" from my Comprehension Thoughtmarks pack.  These are bookmarks that explain the strategy on one side and give kiddos a chance to practice it on the other.  Last, we are completing a "Snapshot" assessment that will help me see if my kiddos understand how photos contribute to a story.

We'll also be reading the leveled stories from one of my newest creations.  I am so psyched to implement these as all of my reading groups will be reading essentially the same story, but each story is appropriately leveled to deliver the exact same content at an appropriate reading level!

That's what we're working on in small groups this week.

You can find the items I'm using on TpT if you want to check them out!

Leveled passages- also available for 2nd grade!

Thoughtshots!  Love them!

And the half page "Snapshots" assessment comes from this pack!

What's In Your Drawer?- Guided Reading for Group 1

Happy Sunday!  I've had a very accomplishing morning full of exercise, cleaning, and laundry.  I've got my phone bluetoothed into our surround sound and have been blasting Pandora all morning.  I'm not going to lie... mixed in with my shuffle of John Legend, David Guetta, and Justin Timberlake is a drop of New Kids on the Block!  Joey Joe has been giving me the energy to keep cleaning all morning ... but it's time for a bloggy break!

First up... the winner of my comprehension bookmark pack is...

#19- Meghan Barnes!  You didn't leave your e-mail address so can you please comment with it or e-mail me so I can send you your goodies?

In case you missed it, Meghan won this new set of CCSS aligned bookmarks chock full of reading comprehension goodness!

So... last week I shared what my group 3 (my on level group) was doing for guided reading.  If you missed that post, click HERE to check it out.

Today I'm going to share about my group 1- which is an approaching level group.

I teach language arts to two groups.  So each drawer has a folder and the folder is ready for my 1st group (their materials are in the left pocket) and my group (right pocket).

The red sticky notes have the names of the students in the groups so I can keep it all straight!

Usually my two groups are doing pretty similar things, but group 1 is the exception this year.

We are studying cause and effect in language arts right now so my morning kiddos are reading a passage about weather from Readworks.org.  If you don't know about Readworks.org, you must immediately go there.  {After you read and comment on this post, of course!}  It is FULL of amazing reading passages that you can select based on comprehension skill, lexile level, grade level, etc...  It's great!

So, my morning kiddos are reading and finding causes and effects in the passage.  They each get their own copy- which they love- and we highlight info and really dig into the text.

When we find cause and effects, we are writing them on sticky notes and adding them to the same chart paper my group 3 was using last week.  That's the beauty of the sticky notes.  I make one anchor chart and we all use it by switching out sticky notes!

Here's the anchor chart I showed you last week that we're still using... we just put on sticky notes, take them off at the end of our session, and then stick them back on to review at the start of our next lesson!

The kiddos in group 1 from my class are working on phonics sounds and basic decoding.  So, cause and effect is taking a backseat for a little while so we can work on those basic skills.

We are reading easy readers from a small group teaching pack I have from Lakeshore Learning.  The stories are longer but full of sight words and plots that are easy to understand.  We're still looking for cause and effect relationships, but on a much smaller scale as the goal with this group is fluency, accuracy, decoding, sight words... you name it, we're working on it!

We are also doing Making Words from Patricia Cunningham.  You can check out the book HERE.  I have a pocket chart that I put up.  I also have a huge collection of laminated index cards that have been cut in half.  The students get the laminated cards, write the letters with a dry erase marker, and follow my directions to build words using the Patricia Cunningham book.  As they build words, I am building them in my chart too and we are finding sounds, doing word families, etc...  I focus on whatever our spelling skill is for the week so they get lots of exposure to that pattern or sound.  The week our skill is sh/th/wh.

Each set of letters makes one mystery word too... can you figure out what it is?!  :)

So, that's what we're doing!  I'm hoping to get some info up later this week about my just above group (group 4) and my way above group (group 5).  That will just leave group 2 to go... those are my "almost there" kiddos!

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!

PS- If you saw my letter to a spammer this weekend, I STILL got spammed after I turned on the word verification!  So then I disabled comments on that particular post and did NOT get spammed today!  So I'm going to turn off word verification and cross my fingers that Hemangi Goswami and rujul modit stay away!

Guided Reading: What's in your Drawer, Group 3?

Happy Tuesday!  I know you're probably heading to bed early the next two nights to prepare for what is usually the longest school day of the year... HALLOWEEN!  We are partying tomorrow instead because it's a half day.  On Halloween, it will be business as usual... with a Halloween flippy book thrown in for morning work!

I often get e-mails about running guided reading and how it works, so I'm going to be sharing over the next few weeks how it works for me.  While I run my reading groups, the other kids are doing Daily Five activities.  I shared how I'm doing rotations right now last week and it's working SO well for us!

I run five groups in my room.  Each group has between four and six students, depending on the needs of the students... I run them as leveled groups.  We all work on the same skills {generally} but with texts appropriate to each group's level.

I have always organized my guided reading materials in Sterlite drawers:

I like this organization.  It's right by my table, the kids can access things they need that are in the drawers (sometimes they have assignments and need stuff from the drawers or two turn stuff in to the drawers... but we'll get to that another week!), and it's just a quick way to organize!

Each drawer has a folder inside.  The folders are red, orange, yellow, green, and blue- like the labels on the drawers! 

Inside the folder are two pockets.  Since I teach ELA to two classes, the left side is for my morning group and the right side is for my group.  On the pocket is a list of the students in each group and then I can put necessary reading passages, materials, etc... in the pocket.

I use sticky notes on my anchor charts so I can re-use them, so the sticky notes from our previous session are in the pocket in this picture.

I use red for the AM class and blue for my class.

I'm going to share Group 3 this week.  Group 3 is an on-level group of 3rd graders.

All groups are working on cause and effect this week (we're also using THESE passages to practice!).  At the start of our session this afternoon, we figured out where the sticky notes from last time we met went on the anchor chart.  I did most of the sticky note writing last time because I was introducing the concept of cause and effect but often the kids fill out the sticky notes, which they LOVE and it's a huge motivator for them to stay engaged in our discussion and reading.

We were reading a text about sea life and, as we found cause and effect relationships in the text, I added them to our anchor chart on sticky notes.

So today we continued where we left off...

We figured out where the sticky notes needed to be on the chart then continued reading our text.  This week I'm using some small group nonfiction comprehension folders from Lakeshore Learning for this group.  I have the 1/2 and 3/4 set and LOVE them!

So, group 3 is reading about ocean life and finding cause and effect relationships in the text.  You can see on my chart above that there are three causes and four effects.  That's because today I told them the fourth effect and they had to read the section about sea otters and figure out the cause of the given effect.

They had to write the cause on their table mat:

Which they L-O-V-E!  (Click here to find these table stickers on Amazon!)

They got to use Scentos dry erase markers to write... which always jazzes them up!

After the students revealed what they had written {and they were all correct!}, one of the kiddos filled out the cause on a sticky note and we added it to the chart.

At the end of the session, I peeled the stickies off and put them in this group's folder for when I see them again later this week.

And here's my small group table all picked up at the end of the day... ready to go for next time!

Next week (I hope!) we can peek inside another group's drawer and see what they're working on!

   

Robert Munsch, New Stuff, Book Club Freebie, and It's Tuesday

Really?  Only TUESDAY?!

We started our Robert Munsch author study this week and it's sooooo fun!  Yesterday I took pics of my kiddos... they had to smile with their teeth showing... and today we read Andrew's Loose Tooth.  Afterwards, they got this paper (from my pack of fillable themed writing paper!) and had to write about a time they lost a tooth!

I programmed the top with a cute little introduction to the assignment and then typed that they had to use 1 onomatopoeia, 1 strrretched out word, and repeating words like Robert Munsch.

Then they blacked out a tooth or two from the pics I took and printed yesterday... the result... the cutest little hallway thing you ever did see!

It was super fun!  And the stories they wrote were too cute!

Tonight I added two new items to my shops- book club packets with questions for Junie B. Jones and a Little Monkey Business and The Littles.  I use packets like this often during my guided reading and like it because it gives my readers focus when I ask them to leave me and complete some reading and thinking on their own.  My goal is to tweak others and add more this summer.  I do lots of chapter book studies in my reading groups!

I wanted to get these up and posted because they are 20% off in my shops until tomorrow yet!  And I think you can still get an extra 10% off at TpT today still.

Here's a peek at how they look.  This packet is yours free for the book The Crybaby Cowboy by Carole Marsh.  It's a chapter book that is an easy reader... some of my on level firsties read it earlier and they were THRILLED to be reading a chapter book!  :)  If you don't have it, I'd highly recommend it as a great confidence booster!

Daily Five Mini-Lessons: How they look in Room 10

Have I mentioned how much I love using Daily Five to organize my reading instruction? Well I do. This is my third year using Daily Five and 2nd year to integrate CAFE. I love Daily Five because students have such freedom, in such a controlled setting, and they *SO* get the importance and urgency of reading. My kids LOVE to read because Daily Five gives them choice and ownership of their learning!

I have done several posts about Daily Five and my guided reading groups, but this one is devoted to the mini-lessons I teach prior to each guided reading group.

Mini-lesson 1- spelling/phonics

On Monday, this mini-lesson is devoted to our spelling words for the week. We spell them together, talk about the rule, chunk them into like groups, etc... this then hangs up in the room all week for students to use during "Work on Words" and just to have exposure to in general. After we find out about our words, students are given a page that has two lists. They cut the list in half, glue one into their "word journal" which lives in their book boxes and the other goes home at the end of the day so they have it for their "Speller's Choice" homework during the week.
On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, this mini-lesson is devoted to all things "hunks and chunks". We learn a new "hunk" on Tuesday, review old ones, and always do decoding activities where we find and identify hunks and chunks in words. Students come to the chart paper, circle a "hunk or chunk", and decode the word. We do a few each day until we finish on Friday. This is also a great chance for me to build vocabulary! I usually choose a few odd words that I believe they have not encountered often. It's always interesting to see which words they know and which they don't!
Mini-lesson #1 on Thursday of each week is all about the spelling. We do some sort of game or other practice activity. We love making our words out of Play Dough, quizzing a friend, and having a spelling bee as a class. This past week, we each chose six words that were tricky for us, folded a sheet of construction paper into six parts, wrote a word in each part, and then rolled a dice. Whatever number came up, that was the word we had to write. They had a blast!

Mini-lesson 2- CAFE

The 2nd mini-lesson is always on a strategy for our CAFE menu. This past week, we focused on a comprehension strategy all week. When I choose the strategy, I look at both of my teacher editions and try to touch on both of the weekly suggested strategies. Last week, the 1st grade strategy was character & setting, which they are pretty secure with and we've already learned anyway, so I only focused on the 2nd grade skill of main idea & details. I'm glad I had time daily to work on this because we really struggled! I chose a non-fiction book about fires and floods because the week before, the 2nd grade story in Treasures was about firefighters. So, this allowed us to also make text-to-text connections. We read a part of the story each day, talked about main idea & details, and made several graphic organizers together. I put the picture of one below. On Monday, I introduce the strategy and model. We learn lots of hand movements for our different strategies. Having something kinesthetic to represent a strategy really helps cement it in students' minds. I have tons of resources for teaching comprehension skills. If you want a peek at how I organize them, check out this post.

On Tuesday, I do an interactive think aloud with the strategy where the students get to participate in my thinking. Wednesdays, we do a game or activity with the strategy. This week, we watched a "Brainpopjr" on main idea and supporting details. Thursday is a day of practical practice where we created a graphic organizer together and Friday is always a review.

I usually read two to three picture books each week during the CAFE round, which I LOOOOVE! Exposing them to high quality literature while practicing reading skills makes my heart go pitter-patter with delight! If you've been a follower of my blog for a while, you probably know that I am a huge reading comprehension nerd. Nothing is cooler than teaching kids how to understand a text and then seeing them put that in to practice! I don't teach a comprehension skill every week. Sometimes we review old strategies and other days we learn a strategy for accuracy, fluency, or expand vocabulary. The majority of these lessons are comprehension lessons though!

Mini-lesson 3- Grammar

The final mini-lesson is the grammar lesson. I touch on both Treasures skills every week in my grammar min-lesson. This past week, the 1st grade skill was about types of sentences/ending punctuation and the 2nd grade lesson was identifying subjects and predicates. I always "prep" a chart paper at the end of one week for the following week with the hunks and chunks on the top and grammar practice things on the bottom. This week, I wrote several sentences and we read them on Monday and talked about the type of sentence each was was, identified the end punctuation, and watched a "Brainpopjr" on sentence types. On Tuesday, I introduced the reviewed the idea of subjects and predicates. We identified them in each of the sentences.

Wednesday is always a game or activity to review the grammar skill. This week we played our favorite "type of sentence" game where I say a sentence and the kids make a noise and movement to show what type of sentence it is as well as what the end mark is.

If I say, "I am a teacher". They go "Boop!" and use their pointer fingers to act out making a period. If I say, "What day is it?". They go "Hmmmm?" and use their pointer to trace a question mark in the air. If I say something like, "Today is my birthday!" they shout "Oh yeah!" and use their pointer to trace an exclamation point in the air. Last, if I give a command ("Go to your room!") they say "Right now!" and use their pointer to make an exclamation point. It's super fun... they love doing commands and exclamations!

On Thursday of each week, we finish on our chart and review what we've learned. And on Friday, I try to have them do some sort of "paper pencil" work on the grammar skill. When the grade level skills are different for the week, each grade level would do a worksheet on their own skill.

I also run a "PM Meeting" each day where we write the leader's "News of the Day". I will be doing a post about "News of the Day" soon because I LOVE it. During this time (which is only about 5-7 minutes), I teach and review a TON of grammar every day! We also do our phonemic awareness activities during this time.

In between each mini-lesson...

If you aren't familiar with the structure of Daily Five, in between each mini-lesson, the students do a self-selected literacy choice while I teach small groups. Last week I did a lengthy post on my guided reading groups that you can read about here. And if you want more info on Daily Five, check out these posts.

I hope that was helpful! Feel free to post questions and I'll address them in a follow-up post sometime next week!

Have a great weekend, teacher friends!  UPDATE- July 4, 2012- use the QR codes below to hop along to other mystery locations for great blog posts!!!!!

Guided Reading- Part 2... more info!

Happy Tuesday!

Thanks for the positive comments and questions on my guided reading post!

This post is designed to answer some questions and provide a bit more information.

So...

Samantha asked: If you are focusing on all these different skills in small groups, how do you handle whole group comprehension and phonics/word building lessons? What does that look like?

*In my whole group lessons, I try and do a mix of the skills for both grade levels for the week. Much of the time they correlate. Even when I taught just 2nd grade, I didn't do a ton with the phonics and word building because not every student needed it. I have always focused on that with just the students who need it. My first mini-lesson every day is a phonics lesson and it is typically whatever the 2nd grade spelling pattern is. I use "The Phonics Dance" for that. I don't use the Phonemic Awareness component in Treasures as I don't feel it is beefy enough. I have a REALLY great phonemic awareness book that we do every day during our "PM Meeting". For comprehension, I check out what the skills are for both grade levels and choose one to focus on. The skills in Treasures spiral and repeat, so they will all get covered throughout the year. Sometimes I don't use that component when it is something we don't need. Then I choose a skill we need more practice with or are ready to work on.

A few of you wondered about my below level group...

*My 2nd graders are on grade level. When I got the split class last year I was nervous about providing critical reading skills to 1st graders, since I had never taught 1st before and would be teaching 2 curriculums (curricula?!). So, the 1st graders I got last year all had their basic reading skills, so my 2nd graders this year are on grade level or really close to being there (3 are *almost* on level). And I do have one that will be pulled to work in a 1st grade group on Wednesdays for phonics. As for my new 1st graders, our K classes were really small last year, so I think that really helped the teachers to be able to give very intense instruction. The K teachers did a phenomenal job, as they always do!

So, here's my question for you... would anyone be interested in a detailed post with pics and the like for how my "mini-lessons" look over the course of a week for Daily Five? I'm happy to do it if ya'll would like to peek into my room during that time!

Guided Reading- How it looks in Room 10 and a non-fiction freebie

Strap in for a long one!

I've had a few e-mails asking how I run guided reading during Daily Five so I took a bunch of pictures and *hopefully* this will give you a good peek into my guided reading time!

Here's my table where the magic happens! I LOVE my easel! My pensive lives in the middle of the table along with a large desk calendar, my teacher editions, and a caddy with lots of writing utensils.

Now that my students are comfortable with Daily Five and we've built our stamina up to 20 minutes, it is time for me to begin guided reading groups. During the first four weeks, while my students were learning how to do Daily Five, I met with individual students during that time to figure out how my groups should look.

This year, I will be running 5 groups. I have a small easel next to my guided reading table and each group *usually* has a chart or other paper where we record our learning or I write things that we will practice. I put a sticky note on the edge of each one with their "number" so I can quickly flip to the chart that I need.

This group is an on-level first grade group. We will be following the small group on-level lessons from the Treasures teacher edition. We will meet on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday.  This chart features our weekly phonics fluency automaticity words & sight words.  This pack is available at my Teacher's Notebook store for both Treasures users AND the file contains the same set of lists with the Treasures correlation removed for non-Treasures users!

This is an on-level 2nd grade group. We will also be following the small group lessons in Treasures. We use the leveled readers and will meet on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. My hope is that in a few weeks, this group can meet three days a week to allow me to meet with other groups more, do individual progress monitoring, and individual conferences.


Group 3 is a mix of 1st and 2nd graders who are beyond level. At this time, it is all boys who love non-fiction texts but don't quite understand how to use all of the text features. Our first study will be on non-fiction text features. Next week, we are working on identifying them, learning what they are, and then finding them in our own non-fiction books. I blew up pictures from a non-fiction book and we will be spending time studying these! We will meet on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

Group 4 is a group of all girls who are beyond level. I want to focus on voracious reading to help grow their vocabulary and expand their book selection. We are going to start with several author and genre studies- first up is Mercer Mayer! I am still working on the unit and can't wait to share it with them! Though the books we read will be easy for them, I think the lovable character will help them get excited about doing more author studies in the future. We'll be meeting on Tuesday and Thursday.

My last group is a mix of 1st and 2nd graders who are very good readers and just need to keep doing what they're doing! We will be doing "book clubs". Our first one is on a Magic Tree House book. We're going to start studying prairie life this week by reading other prairie books and articles. Then we'll start the book next week. We'll meet on Wednesday and Friday. These kiddos will have a lot of reading to do on their own so we can discuss and extend our comprehension during our guided reading time.  We also do The Chocolate Touch- which my kiddos love!

Here are my group lesson plans so you can see how I organize them. Hopefully my sentence fragments and little notes will be understandable! :) You can download a copy of this form as well as several others I've made for individual conferring on my class website here.

Behind my table I have these Sterlite containers (I love my containers!). Each group has a drawer where I store their books and materials for the upcoming week. Any worksheets or workbook pages we will need are copied or ripped out and put into the folder inside the drawers.

I think that's it! Feel free to shoot me questions, but hopefully that was a little helpful!

You can click the graphic below to download some non-fiction features cards that my group 3 will be using this week to label text features! If you find them useful or my post, I'd love to hear from you in the comments! :)