Guided Reading & Screen Chomp

I dedicated my morning to Guided Reading. I have learned about, read about, heard about, and wrote about Guided Reading in various college courses. However, I had never actually been part of a Guided Reading teaching lesson between a teacher and students. So today was my chance! 

During Daily 5, I stayed at the Guided Reading table and listened/observed/participated in each reading group. Each student has a book bag that they bring back and forth between home and school. All of the books the students have been reading during Guided Reading stay in their book bag so the students have many opportunities to read them and become “masters” of the skills they learned during the lesson on each book. 

Students are divided into Guided Reading groups based on their abilities and what they need to work on most when it comes to reading skills. Some students are working with wordless books simply to practice the act of having a conversation with others. The highest group, is working on creating/spelling words based on a given word ending or blend. 

One group in particular stuck out for me today. The lesson and activity these students worked on I found to be quite fun, beneficial, and fitting for the skills these students needed to work on.  

The lesson focused on the word “are.” Students learned a song to help them remember how to spell the word: 

“The seal at the zoo says are are. 

First an A then an R then an E.  Are! Are!” 

Mix and Fix is a fun, interactive, mini activity students can do with any word they might be learning. Each student is given a magnet dish and and letters that make up the word they will be working with.     

The letters in the word are all mixed up 

So students have to rearrange (or fix) the letters to spell the word correctly. 

Today for math, the class learned about and used an app called Screen Chomp.

Students record their voice giving directions while they sketch out their ideas on the screen (which looks like a whiteboard).

A web link is then created from the “talk” that can be saved and shared with anyone. For the math lesson today, the class focused their Math Chomp on how to sort shapes. 

I will be going with my class to music and gym tomorrow, should be fun to observe the students in a different setting!