I’ve witnessed many trends over my thirty some years of teaching and the balanced literacy framework was one of the most profound for me. It encompassed the way I felt reading should be taught. All our lesson plans are based on this model.
Read Aloud
Every lesson begins with a read aloud, in this lesson the focus is on “Pete the Cat and His Magic Sunglasses” by James Dean. The focus would be on developing reading comprehension strategies. This story offers so many opportunities to develop these skills.
Shared Reading
This is where the bulk of the reading instruction takes place as the teacher models the reading process. I always wanted my shared reading to connect with my read aloud and this was the main reason for creating my program. Many of the emergent readers do connect with a literature selection. A simple retelling of the book “Pete the Cat and His Magic Sunglasses” is used for shared reading (see sample page on the right). It is a patterned version that will allow the students to read independently, once it has been read through several times. I projected the colored version on the Interactive whiteboard, so all the students could see the print. I modeled the reading process as we read through the selection together. My initial focus is always making the print meaningful and then moving towards teaching strategies.
Follow-up Emergent Reader
The reader would be used to model the reading process and focus on certain key skills such as alphabet and sight word recognition, punctuation and vocabulary development.
Guided Reading Using Printable Books
Interactive Component
The students cut and paste pictures that correspond to the text. They can also color the pictures.
I use the black and white version of the emergent reader for guided reading. I monitor if my students can track words, correlate text to picture, use initial letter sounds associated with the picture and identify a few sight words. I make a copy for each of my students so they can take these home to read to others. I absolutely love using printable books because it allows my students to “mess them up”. Many of the readers have an interactive component where the students are required to interact with it in some form (circle words, highlight sight words, color pictures, cut and paste pictures that correspond to the text, etc.). This adds a greater sense of ownership and meaning for the students.
Follow-up Literacy Centers
In each unit there are follow-up literacy center ideas, that focus on beginning letter sounds, sight words, word families, and rhyming. The photograph on the right is an example of a literacy game found within the unit.
Writing Follow-up
This is an ideal book to use for modeling how to make inferences from reading the text. This book indirectly tells a great deal about the main character (Pete). The ideas generated would be printed on chart paper and would be used for supporting the students’ writing.
He is kind.
He likes skateboarding.
He has many friends.
He is a good listener
The students generated inferences about what we learned about Pete the cat and I (with help) printed these on chart paper. My students came forward and helped me print words using letters that have already been introduced “share the pen”
Download Pete the Cat Sample Literacy Unit!
Similar to Other Units Found in the Guided Reading, Alphabet, Sight Word Curriculum Program
These mini-literacy units combined, are a complete program, specifically designed to meet the majority of the common core curriculum outcomes in Kindergarten and Pre-K.
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More Information About Flip Booklet Versions of Readers
The flip booklet versions of the readers were designed specifically to allow for quick photocopying. The video provides more information. The link below outlines the photocopier setup I used. Each copier is different though.