Parent Information Night: Guided Reading Idea

It's been a busy beginning of the school year and I am loving my class.  We have been sooo busy learning about each other and how to work well together in our classroom.  We have learned rules, routines and we have been learning each other's names.  To top all lf that off...we had our Parent Information Night last night.  One of the areas that I talk about is Guided Reading.  We play a game (from Mad Gab) where I give each person a card.  I have them try to read the words and make sense out of them.  Most people cannot figure out what is on their card or what the words mean.  I tell them that this is what kids sometimes feel like when we hand them a book to read.  For most of our kids, the words are foreign and really don't mean anything.  I then tell them that we need to teach kids strategies to figure out what the words mean.  I have them try to say the words slowly and think about what makes sense.  After reading the cards, some parents are able to figure out what their words mean.  This is so much what like reading is like for our first graders.  They need to learn to use strategies, such as looking at picture clues, re-reading the words, asking what makes sense, etc.  Finally, I have leveled books (a 3, 8 and 16) to show what the different levels of books look like.  I am downloading the cards that I put out at PIN for the parents to read. 

                                                                Click here for picture cards