Teresa's Visit

I must say, Teresa is the queen of guided reading! She came into my class last week and worked with my highest group and my lowest group. I really liked the way she did the word work before reading the book, so it had some vocabulary help as well! I never knew how to just all of a sudden switch over to word work and keep their attention AFTER they had read the book. I did this with a group yesterday and it really helped! Also, I'd always written words they needed to know on a whiteboard. Teresa did a rhyming book and had them match words that rhyme. Yesterday, there were a lot of compound words in the story, so I thought, hey, why not have them put together compound words. Amazing! They saw the words they had made in the story and were so excited! I also feel that doing the word work beforehand, if it ties into the book, helps my guided reading groups run smoother! With my higher group, which is a P, I had picked a chapter book and my picking wasn't the best...so she picked a picture book. You'd think that the upper levels would want a chapter book and nothing else! They had a great time doing the picture book, and you don't even have to worry about keeping up with the reading with the book day after day:) Picture books are wonderful ALL over!