Guided Reading Time and an Easy Way to Tackle Sentence Structure

We're already on a 2-hour delay tomorrow.  The roads are a complete sheet of ice here in central Ohio.  I mean, really...will this winter ever end?  Oh yeah...Thursday...a high of 50 with a chance of severe weather and tornadoes.  Basically, I should have my Excedrin handy and practice tornado drills.  *Sigh*

Last week I was FINALLY able to meet with my guided reading groups!  And I loved it.  Every second.  It helps so much to break them up according to their level and according to their needs.  There is such value and necessity in guided reading.  You can slow down, speed up, break it down, make them think...

I meet with 5 or 6 different groups throughout the week.  Each group has anywhere from 2-4 students.  I pull books either from our reading series (leveled readers, for those who use Reading Street or another basal that has leveled readers) OR I pull books from our leveled book library in our resource room.  We have two bins with books from F&P - one is fiction, the other nonfiction.

I also do some word reading with our phonics pattern for the week.  Depending on the group, we do anything from practicing decoding them together to rapid word reading.  With my higher kids, we'll flip through them really fast or I'll give a student several cards and have them quickly read through their stack.

We also use some type of graphic organizer to get used to responding to text.  This particular one is from 2nd Grade Stuff, which you can find here.

As I was looking at their writing, I noticed I HAD to address their sentence structure.  So I whipped out my highlighters on a whim...

We went through and talked about how every sentence has to have 2 major parts: who/what it's about, and what happened.  In more formal terms, we talked about subjects and predicates.  I had them highlight the subject in orange and the predicate in yellow.

Then we went back through and fixed our sentences.  It helped them realize if they were missing one or the other!  And surprisingly, if they were missing a part they easily figured out how to fix it and what to write!

What do the rest of my kids do during guided reading?  The Storia app on the iPads...

Read with Someone...

Word Work...

Ok, I *HAVE* to share a special moment that my student teacher had when doing a Scholastic News article on segregation...

See the students standing around her at the rocking chair?  She called them up and told them they weren't allowed to go to our Valentine's Day party.  I wish I could show you the face of the little girl standing closest to her.  She started CRYING.  It was the saddest, sweetest, most genuine cry.  I about cried!  The others were devastated.  She told them the reason the ones sitting on the carpet got to go was because they had blonde hair.  Talk about striking a chord and getting them to understand!  It was one of the most powerful moments I've ever seen.  They got it.  It was amazing.  And boy were they relieved when they were told they were still allowed to go to our party.  ;)

Speaking of parties...I don't know about you, but as a teacher Valentine's Day parties are the worst!  So much sugar, so much excitement, so much chaos.  I truly believe they're worse than Christmas parties.  ;)  But they sure do get creative!

And every party has to end with a little "Just Dance."  ;)

Have a good week my friends!