Boy, these weekends sure are flying by fast! We are almost in February! Crazy how it seems like it takes so long in the first part of the year but then after winter break, that time just flies!
Last week I shared a little but about what I was teaching for main idea as well as black history month. You can read that post HERE. Today, I wanted to show you a look back with pictures of the chart we used and a little but more specific.
For my anchor, I put on clues that the kiddos can use to help them find the main idea. That way when we read through a paragraph, we can look for these things and highlight them. We started our practice with paragraphs. I used the quick read cards from our Black History Quick Reads Set. I chose a level that all the kiddos can access. I have 4 kiddos that are reading at a level D and I wanted to make sure that they could access them. Since we are just focusing on the skill, and not the level, I didn’t want them to get hung up on trying to read the text. I just wanted them to focus on the skill.
When reading A Slave’s Life, we read the whole paragraph first. Then we looked at our anchor and decided how we would find the main idea. We highlighted the first and last sentence and then we thought about what we were learning. That helped us come up with the main idea.
The next day we did the same activity with a different quick read. This time I gave them a copy and they worked with a partner to decide what strategy they were going to use to find the main idea and then they were to write the main idea.
This is where the kiddos struggled a bit. They were focusing on what Harriet Tubman did and not necessarily the main idea of the paragraph. When we came back together, we talked about focusing on only the paragraph and what is was teaching us. We used the strategy of highlighting words that are repeated a lot. We also looked at the title of the paragraph. When we highlighted the repeated words there was a lot of “AHHH! Look at all the Harriet, helped, slaves and free.” That was a big CLICK moment.
Finally, we did the same lesson again, because highlighting is our favorite! This time they all worked on their own to find the main idea. This was a lot better. I had four kiddos who were still struggling but the rest of them got it! Now you know our focus in guided reading this week!
It’s February tomorrow! Hello Groundhog!! If you are looking for some guided reading ideas this week we’ve got the thing for you!
You’ve got two passages, one on What is a Groundhog? and one that is Groundhog’s Day. You’ve got vocabulary practice, sight word practice and some writing pages where the kiddos can write their predictions and write what they know about the day. These passages are also great for finding the main idea, which will be our focus. Click HERE to check it out!
I’m off to prep for the week and get my lamination and laundry on. I hope you all have a fabulous week!
