In Readers’ Workshop this week, we have continued to learn new tricks that readers use to become better readers.  We worked on finding books that are ‘Just Right’ for us.  We used the five finger approach.  The students pick a book and then open to any page.  They read one page and every time they come to a word they don’t know, they would put one of their five fingers down.  If they were left with no fingers up, then the book is too tricky.  If they still have fingers up, then the book is ‘Just Right!’  It has also been fun to see their confidence and enthusiasm build with their independent reading time as we grow our reading stamina.

We expanded our love for Kevin Henkes books this week and used them to learn more about the characters and lesson that we can learn from a story.  We are working on building a base for our readers to be able to talk about the stories they have read.   These components are part of the make up the triangle and heart of our Shape GO map that we use for retelling stories.

We have focused our lessons on the three ways to read a book: read the pictures, read the words, and retell the story.   To retell the story, we learned about a new tool this week: our Check for Understanding check mark.  After reading a just right book, the students pull this check mark out and turn to the first page.  The check mark reminds them to ask two questions: who? & what?  They cover up the words and ask themselves these questions to see if they can remember what each page was mostly about.  This is a self monitoring tool for the kids to use to see if they understood what happened on each page.