It's a bird, It's a plane, no...IT'S READING STRATEGIES to the rescue!

First graders have to make quite a jump in their reading level in first grade. The expectation is that every first grade student will be reading on a level I by the end of the year. The texts they read get more complex and lengthier. We are currently working on reading strategies to help them decode foreign words they might get stuck on. Here are some of the strategies we've learned:

1. Look at the picture
2. Point to the words
3. Get your mouth ready
4. Stretch the word
5. Read top to bottom, left to right
6. Catch the sentence pattern
7. Does it make sense?
8. Does it sound right? Look right?
9. Go back and reread
10. Try both vowel sounds
11. Chunk the word
12. Look for sight words

As not everyone in our room is on the same level, we have broken students up into small groups who are on the same level for what we call guided reading. During guided reading groups, instruction will be given to a small group of students at a time. The teacher will listen to each student read alone, then come back together to make noticings about their reading and what they are going to work on. Listening to the students read is what guides the guided reading lesson for the day. We may practice and work on a particular strategy that most students are not grasping, we may work on some skills that they are forgetting about when they are reading, or we may work on comprehension. Reading strategies are very important for students to practice and use so that they have proper tools to help them figure out a word they don't know, and be their own superhero! It's a bird, it's a plane, no....it's Super Strategies!

With all of our Writing Powers Combined, we are Super Writers!

This year in first grade, we are taking writing to a whole new level and really expecting the students to push themselves farther and produce meaningful and quality writing. This week in Writer's Workshop, we learned the "Super Steps" to creating a published piece of writing. The students learned and practiced first hand that this process doesn't just happen during one session of Writer's Workshop, but over MANY sessions of Writer's Workshop. Here are the "Super Steps" our heros learned and worked on:

1. Prewriting: thinking of a topic and details to go with it
2. Rough Draft: writing our ideas out on paper
3. Revising: rereading our work and/or conferencing with a teacher or peer to see what needs to be fixed
4. Editing: "fixing up" the writing by changing and fixing mistakes, such as, misspelled words, left out words, adding or chaning punctuation, etc.
5. Publishing: making a new copy of our rough draft with illustrations and a cover page

Our heros chose one piece of writing that they wanted to publish. They will not publish every piece of writing in first grade, rather, we taught them to choose their very best or favorite piece of writing to publish. Ask your hero what their published piece of writing is about!