Guided Reading

Carson Dellosa has so much to offer for reading.  I was excited to be offered to review Guided Reading resources for Grades 3-4.  

Each book has a specific focus that you want your learners to hone in on.  Click on the links below to check out each topic.

Summarize

Infer

Connect

Question

Something I love about this resource is that there is 6 text cards in a pack (full paper size) and they are dry erase.  My kiddos don't feel like they are reading a regular book.  Even at the ages of 9 and 10, they get excited about using dry erase markers and picking out their own colors (it's the little things!) 

 

 My kids love to highlight and keep track of their learning.  This helps them locate text evidence and we also did a fun "game" where we would highlight the most important sentence in the paragraph - they had to read their sentences out loud and then discuss why they found their sentence to be a key part of the paragraph.  Fun and they were able to debate and support each other with the sentences they chose!

 Something else that helped with the dry erase is highlighting key vocabulary and drawing pictures.  There is not a lot of room on these guided reading activities to draw or write, but little pictures such as the one below were helpful for the visual learners.  For example, one student drew lava bursting out over the vocabulary word spews.  

 Something I loved about these Guided Reading packs were the different ways to assess.

In each book, there is a discussion guide, writing prompts, and graphic organizers.

In the corner there is a prompt on each dry erase activity labeled "Write about it!" and I loved using these in their reader's notebooks and on sticky notes.  Very quick way to assess and if we did not have time for a quick write, we would hold a quick discussion about the prompt.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

Love those Guided reading packs.  At $19.99 each, it can get a little pricy for us teachers.  But if you are in the same grade level, you can use them year after year and it's a different way to introduce students to new texts and have multiple copies for guided reading.

 If the price does not tickle your fancy, even getting one of these books with a topic you may need a more ideas for works too!

My fourth graders were proud of their cute mother's day gifts.  

They decorated paper bags and placed a decorated pot in each with this TPT freebie "Thank you for helping me grow" :) 

HAVE A GREAT REST OF YOUR WEEK and HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

Disclaimer: Carson Dellosa sent me products in exchange for a blog post, but all opinions in this post are mine.

Math Thinking Mats and Infographics

Carson-Dellosa is a company that has tons of teacher ready materials.  I was really excited to receive the following products in the mail last week:

4th Grade Math Thinking Mats

and

a 4th Grade Infographics Workbook.

When I opened the Thinking Mats, I noticed right away the correlation with the Common Core.  We use Go Math for our math program, and it is very rigorous and definitely builds on the strategies learned year after year.  The quality of the cards was very impressive to me.  Each activity comes with perforated pages that I put into baggies to keep the center together.

 I have nothing but positive things to say about this product.  The students are engaged and eager to play.  As the students get older, sometimes they will begin to lose that spark for learning that they have when they are so young.  After working in grades K-12, you can see a difference of enthusiasm for learning sometimes.  My kids regain that spark when they use this :)

When to use this product: Math centers, an enrichment activity, or a great review for your fast finishers :)
How many people can use this product: This is more of a partner center or for groups up to 4 people.  This is not a product I would use whole class.

The only thing I changed about our first center "Factor Flight" was taking a dry erase marker and underlining the 9 and 6 so the numbers would not be confusing for the kids (and so they wouldn't fight over the numbers!) :) Great product and well worth the money!

The Infographics activities are a great tool for me to review important concepts from our Social Studies curriculum.  For example, after studying the history of New York and map skills, I had the students practice reading different graphs and locating directions and specific places on a map.

Just like the math mats, these are thick, laminated material and who doesn't love to use dry erase?! :) The math activities were a little more engaging for all of my learners, but this product was a great way to help reinforce the material they learned.  And they are all cross-curricular!  As teachers we may feel we do not have enough time to do extra activities but this product combines ELA with Social Studies and even Math!

 

 When to use this product: Perfect to reinforce a specific skill, great for early finishers and perfect for a center activity.
How many people can use this product: I would say this is an independent choice (or with a partner)

Thank you so much for reading!  I hope you can check out these amazing products.  What do you do for math centers and social studies activities?

Have a great day!


Disclaimer: Carson-Dellosa sent me products in exchange for a blog post, but all opinions in this post are mine.

Common Core Resources

Hello everyone!  Happy Early Thanksgiving.  I hope you all have a wonderful time with your family and friends.  I wanted to share with you a few products that I received and had the chance to review.

The first one is Real World Mats for Grade 1.  These mats, available in multiple grade levels, allow for the teacher to provide students with something extra - authentic experiences. 

 

 What I liked about these was that these mats contained topics that children recognize in their world's.  I liked how the mats were in color and can be used with dry erase/wet erase.  If one student or a pair were working together for an extension activity, the dry erase markings would answer the questions and it would be enough for assessment.  The boards fold out and are big enough for little hands to write on and have enough room :)

 There are also recording sheets that can be used for any work mat and these were easy to follow as well.  The recording sheets I used when we did a center rotation for related topics and they were unable to write on the mats.  An idea could be that if you wanted your children to still do dry erase they could erase before they go to their next choice center, however, it would be time consuming :)

Do what is best for your students and your classroom.  The positives I take away from Common Core and working at such a wonderful school are student choice and individuality.

 The Real World Mats are great for math and language arts centers and can be also used as extension activities for enrichment or early finishers.  I keep these in a reachable place so when students are finished with an activity, they can quietly choose a real world mat and have fun while working!

I also have the Carson Dellosa Reading Comprehension and Skills book (First Grade) - This was an important resource that really enhanced my curriculum.  What I liked about this book is that each standard appears in the upper right hand corner of each page.  The book is categorized and separated by skill and strategy, and I am able to pull from the book quickly whenever a topic arises.  The students are also getting a lot out of reading paragraphs, underlining and highlighting key details and words, and performing an activity based on main idea, retelling, sequence, opinion, grammar, etc.

Take a look at some of these sample pages.  These two examples are about writing opinions.  The students read a short little paragraph and answer questions about the passage based on what skill we are talking about.  Some of my kiddos are not fluent readers yet and the small readings help keep their stamina and attention.  

Some of the passages are short, but some are also lengthier.  It's a nice variety for different leveled readers.  I did not take more pictures of us doing this activity since they were so engaged and busy working as I was facilitating :)  Please let me know if you have any questions about these 2 products, but I highly recommend them! They have already helped my firsties a lot!

Disclaimer: Carson Dellosa sent me products in exchange for a blog post, but all opinions in this post are mine.