Earlier this week I posted my plans for Morning Group for March and April. Morning Group is mostly focused on seasonal fun with a big literacy and social skills emphasis. The other type of thematic planning that is done in my classroom is Guided Reading Groups. I coteach my guided reading groups with a coworker which makes planning even more fun! Check out my guided reading schedule. I thought I would share the rough outline of these plans too. Again – written in pencil because you know – sh#@t happens. You never know when you are going to need to switch around those nicely planned ideas.
Low Group:
The low group consists of students in reading levels C-E. These students have more significant language deficits – both receptive and expressive. The skills we are working on are more basic. Our focuses are:
- fluency through sight word recognition
- comprehension through identification of character traits, cause and effect, sequencing, identification of word from contextual cues
- grammar such as singular/plural and opposites
Some of these names of activities will sound like mumbo jumbo. A lot of these are lakeshore resources (I have been lucky to get through donorschoose!). Here are the resources indicated:
Other activities listed:
-
Singular/Plural worksheets from special learning station.
I Like Myself read aloud and writing extension “What character traits do we like about ourselves?”
Reading Cat in the Hat and make a list of the words that describe the cat. What good behavior does he do and what bad behavior does he do?
Teacher read aloud of a Berstein Bears book and writing out the cause and effects. These books are always loaded with these!
- For the writing activities we will be using the Lakeshore flip book highlighted above as well as some other prompts that develop from the weekly activities.
Mid Group:
The mid groups are students levels F-H. These students are more verbal and have more ‘group work’ behaviors than the lower groups. The focus for these students is reading with expressions (puncuation, dialogue, etc.) and comprehension. We are also working on adjectives and sustained academic attention (ie. working on the same book for several weeks!). In March we will be using the reading activities in these centers:
We will also be using these activities:
For the month of April we will be reading a Mercy Watson book. My coworker bought this awesome packet FULL of worksheets from Spedventures ($3 for 5 worksheets for each chapter- what a steal!). This activity will be great to work on sustained attention, long term memory, and work on all of our literacy skills (vocabulary, sequencing, comprehension, fluency) in one unit!
- Using TAH Curriculum for Homeschooling from a Homeschooling Parent - September 10, 2022
- Using The Autism Helper Curriculum for Homeschool - August 8, 2022
- Literacy Subject Overview in The Autism Helper Curriculum - August 2, 2022
Sasha –
This post is awesome. Seeing how you plan everything is very helpful to me. My question is, what kind of reading activities do you do for pre-readers? My lowest is lower than your low group. He does fairly well choosing a response to a question from three picture cues, and will point to items in a book if I ask him, “Where is the snowman?” or will use limited vocabulary to tell me the name of something when I point to it in the book, such as, “What is this?” and he will say, “snowman.” I have been trying to use Edmark with him to introduce sight words, but have not been making a lot of progress. I am having a hard time figuring out what the “next step” for reading comprehension is with him. Just curious if you have any thoughts.
Thank you in advance.
I work with 3rd through 6th graders and I have kids working on Benchmark Levels aa through R. My lowest kids do the Edmark computer program 1:1 with me. I control the mouse and the student reads the word(s) and/or points to the word on the screen. This has been successful with all my kids who have sufficient vision to see the screen. I also purchase a yearly subscription to RAZ-Kids and do custom assignments, so I can assign one book at a time for the student to listen, read, record and take the quiz. If they pass, I assign a new book, if not, I reassign the same book. My kids love both these reading programs. I also subscribe to http://www.spellingcity.com and my kids all have indnividualized spelling lists. Roxanne
Hi Michelle! For prereaders – it is a little less structured. In the past we have bought some kindergarten level workbooks and used that as the basis for some foundational grammar skills. Then we alternate between really focusing on comprehension component skills – answering questions – for this we do a lot of teacher read alouds with answering questions as well as basic questions answering skills (https://theautismhelper.com/helping-emerging-verbal-skills-emerge/) – and sight words. I like the Dolch noun list for my concrete learners. Most of these kids are working on the primer or preprimer list in their fluency station so they are starting to build some sight words. I will do a longer post on this in the next few weeks though! Good question!
Thanks for your great ideas Roxanne!
This is a great post. Your detailed lesson plan is awesome very helpful for me. Thank you for sharing. vicki