This week marks the ending of our third nine weeks and the beginning of our benchmark tests. Today we took our reading benchmark test. For my firsties that included reading short passages and titles, looking at illustrations, and answering questions. Although I haven't gotten their scores back, I saw them doing many of the things we have reviewed since the beginning of the school year.
1) Read the title
2) Look closely at the illustration
3) Read the story two times
4) Find the answer (if it is a recall detail) in the story and circle or underline it.
Practicing step #4 has been paramount to reading comprehension at this point. We have done that with highlighters, crayons, and pencils. We have read short passages from the beginning of the year until now, increasing in length, difficulty, and types of passages. We have read fiction and nonfiction. We have read together and independently. They have also used listening workstations to practice these skills in small groups.
I am also very excited about some new materials that I have just found. The first is a set of
reading comprehension activities for small group instruction. I was able to buy these materials with a
grant I won from
Kappa Delta Pi International Honor Society in Education. I am a proud member of KDP and the
Georgia State Delegate. The title of the grant was "Bridging the Language Gap," and my primary focus is to use the materials provided in the kits in small groups with my ELL students.
I already have any of the Lakeshore listening workstation kits, but I found one more that I am excited to use.
The listening workstation materials will also be used for my ELL students in particular. I love the products by
Lakeshore and in reviewing the new items, I love the content, activities outlined and the variety of passages.
I also purchased an additional listening workstation to add to my current activity station. This new listening workstation is more grammar based, but of course to truly understand what you are reading you also need to understand the parts of speech, punctuation, etc.
The last resource that I really love is the
reproducible reading comprehension book that includes three different levels of passages, questions for students to respond to, and a guide on how to use the passages in mini lessons to get the most out of the content. The reading comprehension passages will be used to differentiate instruction for the whole class. The bonus is that all of these materials are aligned to Common Core, and unlike some materials that I have bought in the past they are truly first grade level appropriate, interesting, and provide a good mix of content and graphics.
What some teachers call centers, I refer to as workstations and do them four days a week for 20 minutes. I change out the workstations each week, but keep the same types of workstations and the same area for the stations. The groups are also the same each week, however that changes at least each nine weeks and sometimes within that nine weeks. The groups are a combination of ability grouped, and random. It is a time when some students get extra practice, remediation, acceleration, and individualized needs met. I follow alot of the principles outlined in
Debbie Diller's books.
I have been doing workstations since my student teaching days and have always found them useful and easy to create, maintain, and helpful for the students. I also start my workstations very early in the year and be sure to make it a part of the set up routine of our workday. I also follow very strongly the principals by
Harry Wong in the classic First Days of School.
I am very excited to try out my new materials to see if these items along with solid, creative, and flexible instruction will help my students shine even brighter during the fourth nine weeks.
