Reading Matters Winter 2018

Working toward independent reading is essential for the struggling readers in my class. I use assessment and knowledge of my students’ progress to guide all of my students toward independence. To achieve this goal, I work with struggling readers each day during a Daily 5 guided reading group. My goal with these students is to focus on developing reading skills. I teach literacy skills explicitly and reinforce these skills throughout the day’s literacy instruction. Once students have practiced a reading strategy with help, I begin to look for them to use it independently. When I am teaching students to use multiple reading strategies to help them with unknown words I incorporate literacy from social studies and science. During independent reading, students read nonfiction books that relate to the topic we are studying. For example, while we were learning about community helpers in social studies, students can read the book Pretend You’re a Community Helper by Karen Bryant-Mole. In this informational text, students use clues in the illustration to understand new words. Students read content vocabulary such as firefighter or police officer. I guide students in using their reader’s notebooks to record new words, use context clues, and analyze illustrations. When we get together for guided reading group students share their discoveries and discuss clues they used to help them make meaning from the new words. From this learning experience students realize that pictures often help them with unknown words in a story. In science when we are studying matter, students often read, Solids, Liquids, and Gases by Angela Royston. Students come across new content words as they learn about the three types of matter in this informational text. Students record their responses as they do in social studies, but often start to rely less on pictures and more on the context clues to determine what the new word means. When students share their charts in guided reading group, their responses demonstrate that they are learning to use strategies from one content area and apply them to another content area to learn new words. Following the second Daily 5 session I teach mathematics. During math, I teach graphs across the curriculum. We make a lot of graphs since graphs can be integrated in almost any mathematics, science, or social studies lesson. In mathematics, for example, we graph students’ favorite animals using a pictograph, then we find which animal has the most votes. Students learn how to read the symbols on the pictograph, and are introduced to vocabulary words like horizontal and vertical . As we discuss the pictograph, I emphasize the common features that this graph shares with other graphs that students learn about in other content area subjects. Students make the connection that all graphs share common features such as a title, labels, and data. While studying weather in science, we keep a month-long bar graph of weather conditions data that we track. While making this graph, students have said, “Wow, it looks like we had more sunny days than rainy days.” From this observation, we make weather predictions about future months as the seasons change. I emphasize to students that graphs are used to collect different kinds of data in each content area. Graphs engage students in looking at data in new and varied ways. Once we conclude our whole group lesson, students work together in small groups to solve mathematics problems.

In addition to focusing on reading in content areas, I use concrete materials in mathematics, science and social studies lessons to foster hands-on learning. In math students learn to skip count by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s. We practice doing this using a hundred chart and a number line. Skip counting requires that students see the patterns created by numbers and understand the relationship between numbers and place values. When we practice skip counting in class we often use songs to help students remember the numbers and recognize the patterns. As one child noticed, “When we go from 25 to 30 then to 35 the pattern in the ones place is five then zero every time.”They love to find patterns in numbers by understanding place value. In science students use thermometers to understand temperature when we study weather. They go outside with their own thermometer and record the temperature. To read a thermometer, it’s very similar to a number line when students use skip counting by 2’s, 5’s or 10’s depending on the thermometer. Students are excited as they to use their skip counting songs to help them read the temperature on the thermometer. As we continue to use thermometers students get better at skip counting to find the exact temperature. With hands- on learning, students use their hands and their minds to problem solve and think beyond pencil and paper tasks. I incorporate hands-on, minds-on learning when my students use manipulatives to talk about how they solve problems. Students are more engaged with the learning process when they do more with their hands. I teach science or social studies in alternating integrated units each day after lunch. Science and social studies are also integrated into the language arts block with read aloud activities, independent reading and writing. Informational texts are useful for connecting what we are studying in science, social studies and mathematics. One way that I do this is by teaching my students reading strategies in a Daily 5 group that they can apply during content area reading. I highlight a strategy to make it obvious and talk about how it can be used in multiple contexts. I know my students are starting to make those connections too when they say, “Oh Ms. Smigel, look! I used the skip-it strategy we used today in our reading group while reading our social studies book.” In whole group conversations, we celebrate small moments like this one. I encourage everyone to apply new strategies as they read different kinds of text. Writing follows the final rotation for Daily 5 each day. Writing lessons often involve mini-lessons, mentor texts and modeling to engage students in writing across the curriculum. An example of a mini-lesson that I use is with mentor texts so that students understand how real authors communicate their message to readers. I select mentor texts based on the topic we are studying. I teach a mini-lesson on letter writing that is useful in language arts, social studies and science. Letter writing is introduced with social studies content because letter writing is a useful form of communication in social studies. Following this instruction, students then practice letter writing in science when they write letters to zookeepers during an animal unit. After the daily mini- lesson, students have independent writing time. While students are working, I spend time conferencing with two or three writers. During conferences I teach skills one-on-one, give advice and

Reading Matters Teaching Matters

Reading Matters | Volume 18 • Winter 2018 | scira.org | 27

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