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Components
Read-Alouds: Reading aloud to children and young-adults provides many benefits. Reading-aloud provides a model of fluent reading and reading strategies, increases knowledge of the world, increases vocabulary, increases familiarity with written language, increases reading interest, and exposes individuals to genre and authors that may otherwise be left unexplored.
Mini-Lessons: Short lessons that provide direct-instruction and guided practice of skills and strategies will be presented each week. Independent practice and assessment of the skills and strategies will take place through a variety of activities.
Vocabulary: Students will experience a variety of approaches to determining the meaning(s) of challenging vocabulary found in the context of the reading material.
Journal Entries: Students will be expected to respond in writing, to prompts related to current and future learning. Topics will span from skill lessons to vocabulary strategies to reading material. Their purpose is three-fold: To determine background knowledge, to assess past and current learning, and to review concepts.
Reading Responses: Reading responses will take place daily, following group/independent reading. Opportunities to respond to reading encourage the reader to connect with the text and determine the level of comprehension. Responses can take many forms and allow readers to practice with various comprehension strategies.
Independent Reading: Students will be provided time, daily, to read silently during class from assigned literature as well as self-selected literature. Students will be encouraged to read from a variety of genre. A “genre puzzle” form will remain in each student’s reading folder as a tool to record genre read and genre to be explored.
Accelorated Reader (AR Program): Accelerated Reader is a program that promotes reading at home and in the classroom. A wide variety of library books are marked as AR books. Students can read AR books and take the associated ten-question test to earn points. Point values increase with the difficulty level of the book. Students will be required to read one AR book each quarter and to take its test.
Home Reading: Students are expected to read outside of class for at least 20 minutes. This is a wonderful opportunity to discuss literature at home!
Book Talks: Each quarter, students will present a Book Talk to their peers on a book they have read outside of class. The purpose of a Book Talk is to promote literacy and to share “good” books with others.
Literature Circles: Students will engage in Literature Circles periodically throughout the school year. Literature Circles offer students a chance to be readers and writers and to apply the literacy skills they are learning.
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