A basic outline of a simple, yet effective reading block

hi everyone uh I thought I'd jump on today because last week I met a new teacher she's starting in first grade and she was terrified she told me she's nervous because she's teaching an early grade she did her student teaching in fifth and she's freaking out about how to set up her reading block um so she asked me like what she could do or how she should set up where she should go so I kind of um gave her some steps and I thought I'd share them here how I set up my reading block it has been super powerful super effective and I think any teacher can do it so first this is for a one hour 60 minutes of reading I start with a whole group mini lesson and I do that for 15 minutes after the mini lesson every student heads to independent reading where they will hopefully be reading independently for 40 minutes to 60 minutes meanwhile I am pulling reading groups or I'm conferring during the whole independent reading period and then I close every reading class with pulling kids together for a quick closing so my mini lesson I'd like to teach nearly every many listen with an interactive read aloud that is I'm teaching reading by modeling reading and um I have another teacher that my daughter just came in that was my daughter so I'd like to teach nearly every mini lesson with an interactive read lab that is on teaching reading by modeling reading and there's so much research that says that teach showing kids how you read and how you're using your reading skills as a reader transfers to them more than anything else you can do more than any worksheets for anything else so I teach with a mini lesson almost every single reading lesson of my year I don't do I don't stray from a mini lesson hardly ever sometimes my mini lessons will be reading just a regular piece of literature and sometimes it's a modeled piece of of something that I've written that I want to specifically show them how I'm modeling it so after that 15 minutes of independent reading or I'm sorry after 15 minutes of a mini lesson I excused my students go to go towards independent reading I my goal is to just get them automatically that's where they go they don't automatically come to me looking into to see if they go to a reading group they go to independent reading um and most of my reading classes will have the the bulk of the class is the students reading independently because there's so much research about how continuous reading is the number one cause a ssin of strong readings so we want them to get lost in text and so our job is to help them find the right text that they can get fully absorbed so that might mean chapter books for one student comic books for another easy readers for someone else we're giving them flexibility so that they can get that feeling of being lost in the text so if you're a new teacher just realized it takes a little a lot of work to get to the point where your students are fully independent that we want them to be fully independent for that 40 minutes and that means it does not happen automatically we are definitely teaching and modeling how to get there so I think in my next video what I'm going to talk about is exactly how to do that and giving you some steps give you some ideas and guidance for getting you to that point where you they can do it on their own because your goal is to be able to have your students completely stay on task so that they are not walking up to you and interrupting you when you are conferring or reading or leading reading groups so the next part is your reading groups or conferring so um I like to start the class I like to start the school year off with a lot more controlling than reading groups and this is because it gets it helps me get to know my students really well with with where they are in text because when you're talking to a student about their reading individually you're going to learn so much more about them than you would if you are in a group setting so I like to do a lot of conferring at the beginning of the year by mid year I'm I would say I'm running reading groups three days a week and I'm conferring the other two days a week just to give you an idea of how often I'm still conferring no mid year so I always start with my read with my lowest readers the most and my lolo lowest and you know my three lowest readers I'm we I try to meet with them every single day so that might mean I'm conferring with them or I'm pulling them into a reading group every day I definitely have it amounts where there's more time spent with my low readers and then the final part of my reading block is I always take that last five minutes to kind of come together I bring everybody back to our rug where we have a little bit of reflection time so I usually restate the skill or strategy that I taught during the mini lesson that day and sometimes I call on one or two students that I had conferred with or who I had met with that did something really well that day and I have them reflect upon what they learned with the rest of the class or some days I some I simply ask students who to share a book that they've read or that they're reading that they really enjoyed and it's a great quick five minutes time so there you have it so a quick recap of how I spend a one-hour period is I have a 15 minute mini lesson that is almost always an interactive read a lot then the next 40 minutes the students are reading independently while I roam the room conferring or I pull small reading groups then for the final five minutes we come back together for a quick closing so I hope that was helpful in my next video I'm going to talk about keeping kids engaged during independent reading so that you can get to your most powerful teaching in your reading groups or conferring we want them totally independent so I can help you with that what I want you to do right now is like me on Facebook or follow me on youtube so that you can find out when I'm live next or when I've posted another video thanks guys bye

Channel: Teaching and Tapas

Views: 1,844

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: reading, teacher, reading block, new teacher, primary, student

Id: TIvZozgNrdw

Length: 7min 19sec (439 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 18 2018