Primary Polka Dots: Oh, Snap! It's ALMOST September!

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Oh, Snap! It's ALMOST September!

I'm excited to link up with Teachers Deals and Dollar Steals to showcase two of my favorite items for September.

Let's jump right into this!

The first product for September that I want to show you is my Daily Close Reading: September pack. If you'd like to check out the August FREEBIE pack, click {HERE}.

In today’s classroom, Close Reading and finding Text Based Evidence is a critical part of the Common Core State Standards. Starting in 3rd grade, students go from “learning to read” to “reading to learn”. Close Reading is an important part of this transition. Yes, students still need to read for enjoyment, but the majority of their reading starting in 3rd grade should involve higher order thinking skills, application of reading strategies, and talking back to the text.

These Daily Close Reading Paragraphs are great to practice true Close Reading. Before diving into a full article or even multiple paragraphs, it’s important that students can master the strategy of Close Reading in “small bites” before hitting the ground running with whole articles or even chapters.

These Daily Close Reading Paragraphs will prepare your students to best comprehend and understand what the author is saying to them and how the author manipulates the text to convey a message, either through text structure, inferences, text features or key details.

Here is a quick video of how to use these Daily Close Reading Paragraphs in your classroom!

The second product for September I want to show you is my Apples & Pumpkins: August & September Fluency Practice pack. This is perfect for grades 2nd-6th grade! I also have a FREE Back-to-School Fluency Practice pack you can check out for free {HERE}.

Fluency is the ability to read words and phrases accurately, and to also comprehend what you are reading. Students should “read like they talk” and their words should “flow like water”. Re-ding-like-a-ro-bot-is-not-fl-ent-re-ding. Noticing punctuation stop signs (commas, exclamation points, periods, questions marks, etc.) and knowing how they are to be used in the fluctuation of a student’s voice is all part of fluency.

To use these cards with students that are struggling:

1)Use Step 1 Card: This card has random back to school words & phrases that are chunked (by different colored sentences) and punctuated. The students will think this is funny because it’s weird words. However, they will read the nonsense sentences correctly because they will have to fully rely on how the sentence flows based on how it is chunked, and what the punctuation is telling them to do. Read through this card once for your student, modeling how this should be done. Emphasize the punctuation stop signs and chunking. It’s not about the silly words, but it’s about training the eyes and ears to follow the cues of the punctuation and the flow of the sentences.

2)Use Step 2 Card: This card is an actual mini-passage, that is punctuated exactly as the nonsense card. This time, the sentences are chunked by colors so they know how to properly chunk the words and phrases as they read the passage. They are to follow along with their fingers as they chunk the phrases. This time, as they read, they should be mimicking the way they read the nonsense passage since the punctuation is the same.

3)Use Step 3 Card: Once the student has read through Step 2 Card, the student reads Step 3 card completely independently. They are to chunk their own phrases and use the punctuation correctly.

4)Use Step 4 Card: This ties in the comprehension and text based evidence answers. You can have the student complete this with you, or independently.