It’s amazing to me how far some of my firsties have come this year. Mind you, this is my first year teaching first grade and I could not have even dreamed for some of the jumps we have taken this year. I had done a lot of research at the beginning of the year as to where students will come in and what the student’s reading levels should be by May but I tell you what, this group of kids has knocked my socks off.
I have students who came in at a D level who are now reading at a M level. I have a few kids on a fifth grade reading level and many who range from 2nd- 3rd.
Due to this I have had to change my game plan. It’s a good thing, yet a
struggle challenge. My class currently ranges from I- O. Talk about differenciated instruction!
I have been using a technique that I call “a post-it note brain” for some of my readers. In our guided reading group we use post-it notes to help us make text-self, text-text and text-world connections in our fiction books. Students write down one connection per page and then after they are finished with their books, they put the post-it notes in their journals and respond to what they read. The post-it notes help them remember their connections and they can write more in-depth reflections on what they have read!
You’ll notice in the pictures each child has a chip that is double sided. One side is yellow and the other is red. If a child has a hard time reading a word and has used all their reading strategies, they turn the chip over to “red” which signifies to me, “I need help.” We then attack the word together.
We also use post-it note brains when we read non-fiction books. The students write down one fact per page on their post-it notes and then put them in their journals and reflect on their favorite things they learned! It is really helping my kids go from “learning to read” to “reading to learn” in a tangible way. You should hear them excitedly tell me facts they have learned about spiders, snakes and other animals!!