Reading

The development of language skills is basic to human achievement. To know the past, to live fully in the present, and to imagine the future requires the effective use of language.

In reading, we have access to book sets from our district, as well as sets of books and tapes from our adopted Language Arts program. These books provide an independent application of various reading strategies, which the students employ during the reading process. I read aloud to students to model effective processing and to develop an enjoyment of reading, while exposing children to a wide range of literature. Students are provided with opportunities for extension and enrichment through involvement in special projects, book reports, reflective discussion, and silent reading (D.E.A.R.). Furthermore, this year we may be offering a variety of motivational reading programs including Accelerated Reader, Pizza Hut Book-It, Raging Rivers, and Six Flags 600-Minute Club.

Each week our class will engage in group reading and study of one short story from our Guided reading book. We will discuss vocabulary, story elements, and creative responses to the literature in great detail. Each week students will be quizzed on the story. Please encourage your child to bring his/her reading book home to share the story with you.

Guided Reading

Guided Reading: How Does Guided Reading Work?

Guided reading is used in the classroom in small-group instruction and for independent reading. When your child enters a new grade he or she is assessed and assigned a guided reading level based on word-knowledge, comprehension, and fluency. The levels range alphabetically from A to Z, with level A representing the lowest level and level Z the highest. This allows the teacher to work closely with each student to help them become better readers by introducing them to increasingly challenging books while meeting the varying instructional needs of each child in the room through guided reading.

Books are assigned guided reading levels based on several general expectations and capabilities of a reader. As the levels progress, the books become more difficult. Each level is based upon the increasing complexity of ten benchmark common book characteristics that readers encounter at all stages of the reading process from when your child picks up his or her first book through the time when he or she becomes a fluent reader. These guided reading categories are:

Genre: The type of the book

Text Structure: How the book is organized and presented
Content: The subject matter of a book
Themes and Ideas: The big ideas that are communicated by the author
Language and Literary Features: The types of writing techniques employed by the writer
Sentence Complexity: How challenging the syntax is of each sentence
Vocabulary: The frequency of new words introduced in the book
Words: The ease at which the words in the book can be figured out or decoded by a reader
Illustrations: The correlation and consistency of images and pictures in the books to the words printed on the page
Book and Print Features: The physical aspects of the printed word on the page