Not - so - Routine  Part 2

One of my favorite things is Daily 5. However, I've added another little piece into it. I organize my "Check in" name list into reading groups. Before asking individual students what their choice is, I dismiss the reading group I'll be meeting with. They go to the reading table and wait for me to finish "Check in" with the rest of the group. Even though the wait is short I still wanted it to be productive, so I always have a job for them to do as a group or as partners. When I get to the reading table we quickly go over the task  and then on to the reading lesson. The kids love it. The tasks are usually specific to that group's needs, but if I don't have something ready, my go-to job is to set a bunch of word cards on the table for them to put in ABC order

Some of the jobs:

*put word cards in ABC order 

*sound and word sorts (long/short vowel, digraphs, parts of speech, etc.)

*card matching (contractions, compound words, synonyms, antonyms, vocabulary and meaning)

*my lowest group practices their sight word Super Stars word lists (they LOVE this)

*sort story vocabulary - I often do this  before they start a new book. Sometimes the group is asked to sort the words into 2 or 3 groups based on their choice. Other times I ask them to read over the words and be ready to predict what the story will be about and what some of the story events will be. This generates a lot of disagreement  discussion and is a great motivator for reading the story. In this picture the group had to predict if the word cards would be on the side of "Good" or "Bad" (from the book Secrets of Droon

*here the group had to sort vocabulary into "horse words" and "not horse words" from the book Wonder Horse

I've found that these short tasks are a great way to practice skills, promote discussion, and encourage interest in the book to be read.