Welcome to our Flipped Reading Block Book Study! This weeks questions will be about Chapters 3 and 4: Whole Group Guided Practice as a Follow-Up to Flipped Lessons AND Guiding and Facilitating Instruction in Small Groups.  As always, we encourage you to link up your posts if you are reading this book.

At home practice allows for more “we do” time in the classroom; the face to face time that really counts and builds community and connections in your classroom.  At home, students also have more time to investigate their own inquiries and return to the classroom feeling confident and secure in their background knowledge.  Students are able to get the “teacher-talk” out of the way at home and come back to school ready to interact with their peers and have wonderful, enriching, meaningful discussions.

Some examples of effective at-home mini lessons include: watching a prerecorded video of a teacher lecture.  In K-1 this could look like a teacher presenting the letters of the alphabet in a song or chant with their connected letter sounds so that the students could listen to it at home/on the go as needed to build new knowledge. A teacher can also record themselves counting, saying the days of the week, months of the year, and all those other little repetitive things we practice each day in Kindergarten.  1st grade teachers can record addition and subtraction facts, word families, coin values, and tips for telling time.  There are many prerecorded videos out on the market already that K-1 teachers can direct their families to.  I like Heidi Songs, Pete Harry, Dr. Jean, Debbie Clement, and Jack Hartmann for some of the best learning songs out there!

I like to use lots of different parings in my classroom.  I often like to mix partners up so that they don’t get “stale”! I just took Responsive Classroom training this summer and partner pairs were one thing we did frequently.  After finishing that training, I went to the dollar spot at Target and purchased two sets of Alphabet, Number, Rhyming, Animal, and Shape cards.  I will use these to help my new Kinders find their partner quickly and also help them to identify their like partners.  We also have floor partners, knee to knee partners, writing buddies, restroom buddies, and “I need help, what do I do next? buddies”! 🙂

There are many times when students are captivated by something we are learning about in class and they go home and learn more about whatever the topic is.  They LOVE returning to class to share with the rest of us about their new discoveries.  By having at-home practice, students will be able to return to school and share with their partners about their new learning.  They can talk about what captured their attention, sing a newly learned song together, or use their new knowledge to work together on an in class task. The children will feel confident in their new knowledge by having had a chance to practice at home and with a smaller peer group, leading to more meaningful learning time in the whole and small groups.

I have some very small book clubs set up in my classroom, usually during the second semester when I have some more fluent readers emerging.  They are able to pick a book of their choosing (on their level, or just above it) and read and discuss it within their small group.  Often times, these students will also give a book talk to the rest of the students to encourage them to read that book as well.  We usually will have a focus question that helps my students cue in on the comprehension part of the reading–do they understand what they are reading.  My goal is to help my students be fluent readers, but also readers who can comprehend what they are reading; comprehend their reading enough to have a discussion about it. 🙂

Don’t forget to link up if you are reading this book along with us! 🙂