During PIN I briefly referred to our "I Pick" poster. In my haste to COVER ALL aspects of literacy in our room I think I may have done this concept a disservice. This is an anchor chart we will be referring to ALL.YEAR.LONG!!
Sorry about the poor picture quality...but here is how the method works. Each Friday as part of our Daily 5 children choose new books for their book boxes. The goal is that all these books are a good fit in that they are independent reads. This does not happen naturally. It is a process. First Graders are still trying to find the common ground between what they can read and what they want to read. The really great think about good fit books though is choice and luckily we have plenty of it!
When children go off to find their new books we put lots of book baskets from our library in front of them. Some of the baskets are leveled. For example after several reading assessments and observations I might guide your child to choose from the "red" bucket or the "yellow" bucket. These leveled buckets match your child's independent reading level. However, we also have lots of other genre based book baskets that children can pick from too. We have favorite authors, favorite characters, fairy tales, mysteries, biographies, non-fiction, rhyming....lots and lots of choices!!
We take read to self pretty seriously here in Rm 27 and yes those are legs stretching out from under a table. Children are allowed to choose any spot around the room as long as it is a good spot for them to work on reading stamina and keep their brain on their books. The tiniest of corners, under tables, and cradled in between cubbies are favorites! One little guy was going to squeeze himself into the spot behind one of our shelving units until he found it was already inhabited by a spider :)
Of course we did a lot more than read to self this week, but I thought it was important enough for a whole blog post. I hope you did too! On a side note, my husband and I had my son's first ever "Back to School Night" and I have to say it was a little easier on the other side of the room :)
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| Back to School Night Selfie!! |
