Wondering what to do with your top readers to challenge them? I had that problem, so I made these.
Kids love learning about animals so I made these informational text reading passages. They are challenging enough (even for my way above grade level readers) but still accessible to my above grade level kiddos.
I have used them in two ways. Most of the time I will use them as a close read activity. I read aloud to them once. After reading it we talk about any new facts we might have learned or I ask them if there were any words they didn't know. Then I give them each their own copy and we go back into the text and reread it again. This time they annotate as we read. They underline the key facts and circle words they don't know. When that is done, we discuss what we have read and define any words we don't know. I then send the kids home with the passage and the two pages of comprehension questions.
The other way that I have used this is as a cold read passage. I simply send it home along with the comprehension question pages and I ask the kids to read it to themselves first, then to reread and annotate, then to read it to their parents. The parents can help with any questions the kids might have. When the student is confident that they understand the text, they will then answer the written questions.
My top readers absolutely LOVE these! Since we live close to both the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Safari Park, my kids feel like animal experts already. Before each exercise, I will ask them what they know about the animal we will be reading about. They usually know a lot, but I have fun facts hidden in the text about each animal and they always tell me that they learned something new after doing the exercise.
You can find these at my TpT store. Just click on the photo to take you there, or visit my store and browse around. I'm always adding new resources so be sure to follow my store if you like what you see.
I hope you can use these in your own classroom as well. I teach kindergarten but only use them with my kiddos that are reading around a 2nd grade level. They are good for 1-5th grades so share this post with your upper grade buddies as well. They would be a great supplement to an animal science unit.
0 comments:
Post a Comment