Not the expert
I am only in the second year of using Harcourt, and only in the second year of teaching overall, so I can't claim to be an expert, but here's what I do. We have a 2 hour block, 1/2 an hour of that for writing, and 90 minutes for reading instruction. I'm suppose to spend an hour of that doing guided reading. I'm not saying my method is best, but here's what I've worked out.
1. The basal story. I do this whole group (shared reading) This is supposed to be 20 minutes a day, but sometimes this goes over.
Monday. We discuss the vocabulary and perhaps build prior knowledge or some other activity related to the story we will read for the week.
Vocab and Spelling worksheet.
Tuesday. I read the story aloud and ask comprehension questions. The students follow along in the their own books. Vocab and spelling worksheet. (There are ESL, below level, standard and above level versions of the vocabulary worksheet.) I generally give a below level on Monday and a level on Tuesday. This gives them two practices.
Wednesday: I play the tape, students follow along in their books, then answer written "fill in the blank" type questions from the story. I make these up myself, after taking a peek at the comprehension test.
Thursday, I do a grammer lesson from that week. Give the worksheet
Friday: Comprehension test. Often, I give this open book. Most kids don't bother to crack the book, but I give them every chance.
2. Guided Reading: I use the leveled readers that come with the series. At most, you can stretch this out to two days. The other three days can be grammer lessons from the series or literature circles. While I'm doing guided reading, they're in centers, or "independent reading." We rotate this. I sent up the centers, or they can go to the library, check out books, read, or take A/R tests.
I don't use the writing component. I make up my own writing prompts. I find theirs pretty boring.
There's an editing component that makes good "morning work" or "bell work." There's also a question of the day that can be used for morning journalling.
I'd like to start throwing the phonics and word study and such into a few minutes of my guided reading groups each day. I hope I'm more together next year myself.
P.S. The smartest thing I ever did was to reduce the size of the comprehension test so that two pages fit on one page, copy them back to back, using only one piece of paper. It's a cinch to grade. I tried having them take the tests on the computer, but it a) takes too long, and b) they don't have anything to take home to mom!
I am needing some examples from you on how you do your reading each week. We have to use Harcourt, we have to meet in groups, we have to do centers, a word wall, and we have to have 90 min. uniterrupted of reading. I am in my second year and I've struggled all year with this and I want to get things in order for next year. What do you do each day? What parts of the series are whole group and what do you do with each reading group? How do you assess? What type of information do you take on the students? Do you just get grades for the workbook pages and test that comes with the story or do you do something else? Also, what about all those extra things in the TE book? Like the phonics and word study and extra skills that are not assessed with a wb page? Thanks for the help and advice. I'm hoping to get things a little more under control for next year this summer.
