Reading in 6th - part 2

This morning I had to announce to my class that our normal reading time would be cancelled so that we could help our IT teacher out with a Google Earth presentation. You should have heard the moans! My class has really grown as readers since the beginning of the school year. I contribute that to a variety of different things:

• Freedom to choose books
• Daily discussions
• Book Talks
• Library visits
• Maturing into more engaging books

Of all of those, I think that the daily discussions that we've had, and setting our routine in the room, have been the most beneficial. This year I decided, after some training in the summer, to give the CAFE idea by 'The Sisters' a try in my classroom. It wasn't easy but it wasn't entirely life consuming either. I'll certainly use it again next year with a few modifications. If you haven't checked out their materials yet you should visit their site (*Disclaimer: I am discussing and reviewing this on my own, they are not paying me to do this):

http://www.the2sisters.com/

At the beginning of the year we spend about two months learning how to read in the classroom. You would be surprised at how differently the students went through elementary reading before coming to me! I created some handouts that the students put in their 5-subject notebooks to keep for the year. Here are examples of what we used:

The kids certainly had their favorites! Comment below if you want to know any specific activities that I tried this past year. I'm hoping to involve my intern in planning some reading activities in the fall as well and will share those as we create them.

Happy Wednesday everyone, you are a light to each student you interact with today!