Balanced Literacy-- Reading

I think a lot of schools are working towards a balanced literacy approach in their classrooms. The key components of Balanced Literacy are:

Reading Aloud

Shared Reading

Guided Reading

Independent Reading

Modeled or Interactive Writing

Shared Writing

Guided Writing (Writing Workshop)

Independent Writing

Throughout those components, especially reading, teachers need to be sure to scaffold their students. What does that look like? Well, it's helping students to story map (details, main idea, characters, setting, plot, problem and solution), analyze characters,  decipher confusing concepts. One way that I help to scaffold my student's reading is with reading comprehension sheets. They read a story and have to tell me the details.

They look something like this (depending on the skill I am addressing):

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I just uploaded my reading comprehension packet onto my TPT store and my Teacher's Notebook store. It has 18 pages of graphic organizers for both fiction and non-fiction stories. It has varied levels, too. So if you want to use just illustrations at the beginning of the year and move to sentences/writing as your students progress, you can.

Sale... Just Because!

Today through Monday, I'm having a sale in my TPT store with 10% off everything!! Head over and stock up! I just posted my Sight Word Practice sheets yesterday.

Number Writing Practice

Oh, it was so good to clean up my classroom and cleanse myself of all the junk :) Then I ended up getting some more junk from other Kinder teachers who were moving grades. My assistant and I got a great head start on all of the beginning of the year stuff, which will be fantastic once in-service comes and all we have to do is set up the room!!

I have so many things planned to make over the summer for my classroom. I am so excited about changing my theme to "under the sea!" There are SO many ideas!! Anyway, enough of my ramblings.... Kinder-numbers are scary looking at the beginning of the year and they need A LOT of practice, so I made a packet on what else... NUMBER WRITING! They are really fun. Each page has both numeral and number word tracing and writing practice, coloring the number word, and basic numeracy practice (drawing the correct number of items for each number).

Here is a sample page for you:

 Number One

You can pick it up at my Teachers Pay Teacher's Store OR my Teachers Notebook Store!!

Grammar

I gave ya'll a sample of my grammar practice sheets last week and I finally finished the unit! I swear I have twenty different units going right now :) I WILL get them all done sometime soon. Anyway, head over to my TPT store and pick up this unit! It has 25 different daily grammar practice sheets focusing on capitalization, spacing, end mark punctuation and Dolch sight words. It has a little rodeo theme going on and it is only $2.00!!