Shared reading is one of my favorite times of the day. Our shared reading time begins with a poetry walk. The class "reads"/chants/sings each of 6 poems or songs that are written on illustrated charts as the teacher points to the words. Two new poems are introduced weekly. The two poems that have been up for 3 weeks are rotated out. The poems sometimes go with our themes or with current holidays or seasons. Many are songs. If so, I record the melody on my keyboard and the students and I sing along. As poems are introduced, new vocabulary is explained. Depending on the songs/poems we discuss a variety of concepts of print, rhyme and/or letters and sounds. There are also actions and movements to go with many of the titles. This gives the children a chance to "shake their sillies out" so to speak.
The next thing we do is read our "old favorite" or "leader's choice" book. Each day the leader selects from all the previously read big books and the class rereads the story together.
Then it is time for the book for our current week. Our theme for the week is built around it. Many of our books are from the Wright Group and are accompanied by excellent tapes. At the beginning of the week, we listen to the taped lesson and read and discuss the book according to the directions on the tape. If there is no tape for the week's book, we begin by making predictions about the story and sometimes we take a picture walk in the book and tell what is happening in the story. Then I read the big book aloud to the students, allowing them to chime in when they know the text. We reread it again using an oral cloze procedure, where I leave out words and the students supply them. By the end of the week, the students are "reading" the entire text with me.
This big book reading is highly important to the students, as this is where reading is modeled for them, as I point to the text. It is where they begin to see that words tell the story, left to right, top to bottom progression, spacing between words, use of capitalization, use of punctuation, recognize letters, understand letter/sound correspondence, and develop vocabulary and comprehension. Most importantly they are building self-confidence as readers! In the safety and comfort of the group reading, children who are less sure of themselves are able to read along at their own rate. The shared reading process is highly individualized. Although to the observer, it would seem that all children are doing the same task, in reality, some children are listening and building comprehension, some are following the pictures, some are noticing that a certain sound is repeated in the story or picking up on the concept of rhyme, some are picking up a new sight word and some are actually reading fluently. Wherever the child is functioning, he/she is able to "plug him/herself" into the lesson and learn something new. Besides, it is fun and enjoyable!!!
We proceed to a mini lesson about comprehension, story elements, phonemic awareness, or concepts of print. Usually on Mondays we discuss the story. I ask questions to check comprehension and we discuss story elements. Tuesdays we focus on a letter and match a letter card to the text of the book. Wednesdays we focus on the sound that Tuesday's letter made. I say a variety words some of which start with our letter of focus and the students indicate by thumbs up or down if the word begins with that letter. Thursdays we match word cards to the text. Usually a brief discussion of the story takes place on Tuesday, Wed. and Thursday, often based on student perceptions and discoveries as a result of repeated reading. Fridays we review all the previously taught concepts that week.
Also, part of our mini lesson is a daily review of previously taught letter sounds through an activity called "sound patterning". This idea was taken from the Teachers.Net Chatboard. On a sentence strip I write a pattern of letters such as:
b b p d b b p d b b p d
As I point to each letter the students make the corresponding sound. The sounds and patterns grow more complex as the year progresses. We do about 3 or 4 different sound patterns each day as a review.
A new feature this year is our word wall. I covered our rarely used front chalkboard with blue butcher paper and put animal letters printed from the Printshop Delux program up. Under the letters we add words that begin with that letter. We began with each child's name at the rate of one name per day. The leader for the day lead a cheer for his/her name, we counted the letters in his/her name and drew a picture of him/her so that the leader had a little book to take home at the end of the day. We now add the sight words that we match during our shared reading lessons. We add 3 to 5 words per week to the wall. Activities we do with our word wall include pointing at words and having the children say the word, pointing at letters and having the children say the letters. pointing at letters and having children name the sound, clapping the syllables of the words, leading cheers for some of the words and guessing a word I have chosen based on clues that are given. We spend 5 to 10 minutes daily on word wall activities, with more time devoted to word wall games or word building activies on Fridays. This idea is adapted from Pat Cunningham's Month by Month Reading and Wrtiting for Kindergarten and her Four Blocks Curriculum. Here are a couple of photos of our word wall. Click on the image to see a bigger picture.
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