Teaching All Reading Skills to All Learners

It hasn’t been that long since I was in the classroom, so I can vividly remember some of the challenges I had as I tried to provide meaningful and useful activities to the children in my classroom. First of all, I had students with a wide range of ability levels, many children with learning challenges, and several ELL students. There was no way I was going to ever be able to do lesson plans for my class and expect to reach all the learners unless I planned for all the different needs represented in my room.

Small Group Instruction Helps

One thing that helped was that I taught a good part of the day in small groups. It meant a lot of planning, but at least I was able to teach groups of kids and reach them with materials they needed to grow to their fullest potential. For example, in one group, we focused on reading non-fiction books that also taught science concepts so that the children, who were already pretty fluent readers, could learn vocabulary terms across the curriculum. Another group focused a lot on reading comprehension, another on sound spellings which were calculated to help them smooth out their reading and make it less of a chore. Finally, I had a group of ELL students; the materials I chose for them focused on learning basic English vocabulary, correct sentence structure, and comprehension. We avoided nonsense words or slang as much as possible.

Center Folders Help

I managed the materials for my groups by using white bins to hold the week’s materials which were marked with brightly colored dots. The reading folders for each group matched the dots on their bins. When I checked their center work as we were getting all set for lunch, it was easy to recall what the tasks had been for each group. I made sure that in each independent center, the children had to record something in their folder so I could see that they truly did their work. For example, if they were working on a sentence unscramble activity, they would write the unscrambled sentence in their folder. If ABC order, again, they would write the words in the correct order. If they were playing a sorting game with words, they would write the words in groups. (Ex: if their activity sheet had these words, “we, did, call, look, book, mid, she, mall, cook, the, Sid, etc., the children would group them by sound spelling and write the groups in columns like this: “we, he, she, me, the” and “did, mid, lid, bid, Sid” and “call, tall, ball, hall, mall,” etc.)

Well Designed, Comprehensive Resources Help

The reason I recently finished creating The Reading Teacher’s Encyclopedia is because I still shudder when I remember some personal experiences: lugging all these big huge heavy curriculum binders home for the weekend so I could plan lessons for the week, and the mad scramble to come up with fun and educational activities to use in independent centers. I also remember being bedeviled by the suspicion that as I searched for materials to use (we had very little provided to us in terms of curriculum), I was very likely omitting some really important reading skills that I should cover. It was my own “pain” that inspired this resource.

My last school used a reading program that utilized books we selected from the book room to read with our small groups. We were supposed to choose books on the groups’ levels, and then make sure and teach all the necessary reading skills through the books we read. What I know happened all too often is that when teachers got overwhelmed with the planning, they selected new books to read, but they “taught” the same skills over and over again. It was not a great system! What would have helped tremendously and what would have benefitted the children would have been a resource that covered ALL the necessary reading skills so that teachers would know they had covered all the bases if they completed all the activities in the resource.

Puzzles and Tactile Activities Help

We know that puzzles and tactile activities help engage children in learning. It is really good to get away from too much that is about pencil and paper. The Encyclopedia has a really nice mix of activities. There are teacher-led activities that utilize the word walls provided and have children use whiteboards and markers to write their responses. Teachers can do a quick visual scan to make sure concepts are caught, children wipe their boards clean and voila, the activity is done.

Some activities are in game format, such as vocabulary Bingo.  Children can cut their vocabulary words out and glue them in place on the board provided so that every Bingo board is different. My students LOVED playing sight word Bingo! Of course they had to be able to quickly recognize their words if they were going to be able to mark them with a chip! Go Fish cards allow kids to play a game in small groups while practicing reading their sight words. I liked to have time reserved for games on the rug at the end of the day while we were waiting for buses to arrive. Also, on Fridays in the late afternoon, we looked forward to games and activities that would truly benefit the children academically. The Encyclopedia's Word Sort is a tactile game that is great for children who need the hands-on experience.

The writing pages are great because the writing sheets contain visual prompts so your children won’t whine “But I don’t know what to write about!” The prompts go along with other activities in terms of their theme. For instance, Level B-5 is all about sea creatures such as sharks and whales, so of course while we’re on the subject, the writing papers have images of those creatures. The kids are already primed for the topic, so getting started is easier. Another type of activity included is “Illustrate”: a sheet with a sentence also related to the theme. The child will read the sentence and draw a picture of what it said. This is a good way to reinforce comprehension and visualization. Doing this activity regularly will greatly help with reading comprehension.

Finally, we’ve included activities such as word searches; if you have early finishers, why not give them a puzzle to do that will use the vocabulary words they are currently learning? Fill-in-the-Blank will help with comprehension; Crossword puzzles also help with comprehension and might be a great activity to do in pairs. I mean, really, go HERE and check out all the free sample pages from the Encyclopedia. You’ll love what you see!

Wow! Just having this huge binder in front of me makes me want to go back and do it all over again! This time, however, I would have a mini-version on CD to toss into my purse by my lipstick and gum – lesson planning on the weekends would be so sweet!