Week 9- First Grade

“Birthdays, Spiders, Graphs and More” Week 9 First Grade

Birthdays (Fiction, Levels A-J, Stage 2) by Joy Cowley

What Would You Like? (Fiction, Level E) by Joy Cowley

Spider, Spider (Fiction, Level E) by Joy Cowley

Reading a Graph (Non-fiction, Level E) by Margie Burton

We really enjoyed all of the books in the AlphaSkills kit this week, but our favorite book was Birthdays because my first grader loves to think about, talk about, and dream about his birthday. (What a shame it only comes once a year!)

The activity I want to highlight this week is the Shared Reading plan for Birthdays. Shared Reading is something the Read with Sarah model encourages several times throughout the year where the parent and child reads together a book that is approximately six months above the student’s instructional reading level. The books chosen for shared reading are predictable and appealing for the age level targeted. The purpose of shared reading is that the student learns what reading is and develops confidence in his/her ability to become a fluent reader. The Guided Reading Lesson for this book outlines the following Shared Reading elements:

  • Parent models reading aloud in several different ways and discusses pictures on the front cover, author, illustrator, cover, student’s/child’s prediction based on the title and front cover, and any necessary background for story words and concepts the student/child may not already know, as well as title page elements.
  • Parent models prosody and expression.
  • Parent uses “the language of books,” such as “I’m going to turn to the first page of the story…Let’s look at the picture on the top of the page…the page number on the bottom of the page, etc.” and finger-pointing to each word as she/he reads to let student/child see that words make sentences and sentences make stories.
  • Parent reads without referring to the pictures, and encourages the child to join in on the repetitive phrases.
  • Parent and child read the book aloud together.

This Guided Lesson also outlines which steps to repeat on days 2-5, and the repetition of the book daily builds confidence and competence in reading and recognizing important print elements. Birthdays is a book that any child is bound to love as long as he/she loves opening birthday gifts!

For more information about the AlphaSkills Read with Sarah curriculum and our family, see the AlphaSkills Blog Introduction.