Most primary classes include word walls. One of the great things about word walls is that they are so diverse. You can make them with sight words/high-frequency words to academic vocabulary or stationary word walls to interactive and portable word walls. This video is going to demonstrate and showcase some unique and interesting word walls to inspire you to create your own or to model one of them in your own home or classroom. Just remember, a good word wall is one that is part of daily instruction and a tool that can be used by students. They can be themed, evolve over time, or there can be multiple word walls in a classroom. To get your mind going, do not limit your word wall to English Language Arts; can you think about how to use one for maths or the sciences?
Choral Reading
Choral reading is a common strategy predominantly used in primary classrooms, and with English Language Learners (ELL). This strategy helps students to develop oral language skills, student comprehension, and student fluency. Choral reading is best used for poems or short stories. This strategy is effective for developing expression and fluency in the students’ reading. Choral reading is also very beneficial for struggling readers, as they feel their voice can be drowned out amongst the other students. There are a few ways to best execute choral reading. It can be done as a whole class activity with all students reading together or all together with specific students reading small portions of the book or poem. Another method is to have students in small groups responsible for a section of the story or poem. Four arrangements to have students do this suggested in “50 Literary Strategies” are echo reading, leader and chorus reading, small-group reading, and cumulative reading. These will be discussed further in the video to follow. They key element of choral reading is repetition. Students will rehearse the words they are reading many times during the reading, or in practice to read aloud to the class.
Guided Reading
The Guided Reading Strategy is a highly engaging activity for students PreK to Grade 2. Guided Reading is a strategy where small groups of children sit with a teacher and read a book to themselves. This strategy is only used for small groups of children as it requires special attention to each member of the group. The teacher selects the appropriate books and before starting the activity will talk about the book with the group. This is an individual activity and not an activity that has students share their reading. The teachers role is to help the students decode words, deal with sentence structure and comprehend ideas presented in the text if they are struggling. This strategy helps create an interactive lesson as teachers tend to create 3 to 4 different groups completing different activities while the one group is completing the guided reading. Guided Reading is a great way to provide one on one skill building with your students and assess their reading and comprehension levels.
Readers Theatre
Are you having a hard time keeping your students motivated? Are your students lacking in their love of reading? If you are looking for an exciting way to engage your students, look no further? Readers theatre is an exciting strategy to engage students in a fun reading activity. It involves a non-threatening environment, where students bring the text to life by using tone, expression, mood and attitude. Each character’s dialogue is performed by the students, through oral story-telling. The benefits for the students are increased confidence and fluency, intonation, gesture and tone.
SHARED READING!
Shared reading is a great way to introduce and get students engaged in the great big world of reading. Shared reading is just like it says. When we share the reading, this can be a teacher reading a story to students, students reading sections of a book together as a class, or students reading aloud one on one; whatever gets students reading and engaging with the stories around us! Most importantly shared reading should be done FREQUENTLY. Many educators recommend that for early readers, shared reading should be done every day for students in kindergarten, and at least 2-3 times a week for those in high grades up to grade 3. Through shared reading times, students learn dozens of different concepts about how language and stories work. It even promotes the normalcy and love of reading that will benefit students throughout their entire lives.
Watch a lesson here on Shared Reading ft. a special guest!