A-Z with F&P

I need to begin this post by giving credit to my Literacy Facilitator, Vicki Douvikas, for sharing this idea at a Balanced Literacy training. She showed us how to create a toolkit to help us have more effective conferences during Reading Workshop. I took her suggestions, added in my own ideas, and created my version of a conferencing toolkit.
 
The basic idea of this toolkit is to give teachers a readily available set of books and questions to guide your conferences with readers based on their reading levels.

 

I used a thick, 3-ring binder with plastic pockets. You could choose to color-code your plastic pockets with green for at-level, yellow for strategic, and red for intensive based on your grade level text. I did not color-code mine because I wanted it to be flexible just in case I ever have to change grade levels.

 

There is one pocket for each letter of the alphabet which corresponds to the Fountas and Pinnell Guided Reading Levels. Inside each pocket there is a set of prompts to use when conferencing with your readers, one or two books at the particular level, and questions stems to guide your discussions.

 

 

 

 

I use books from the website Reading A to Z. I chose these books for a few reasons. They are readily available and you can print as many copies as you need. These books are leveled to the Fountas and Pinnell scale. The books are also part of RAZ Kids, so the students can independently read the books you use during the conference. There are a variety of genres and interesting topics. These paper books are not as bulky as real books.

 

 

**Please take note of the inside cover of the book--the correlation is sometimes a letter off.  Make sure you have the books leveled correctly. A Reading A to Z book may be a letter L, but its F&P level may actually be a K.**

 

 

 

I cover the stapled spine of the book with duct tape so it will last through many reads.

 

 

I also place jottings inside the book to help guide my discussions with readers. I will be honest and say I do not have all of my books coded with sticky notes yet because it is very time consuming. This binder is an ongoing piece of work. I am sure I will add, delete, and change several things as the year progresses. That IS what good teachers do--we change instruction to meet our learners' needs.

 

 

 

The books I put in my toolkit are not random.  For the lower levels, A-F, I used mostly realistic fiction. With levels G-U I chose to use as many fables, mysteries, and biographies as I could find because these are the genre that my students struggle with the most. I added in some nonfiction books and chose topics my students are interested in such as dangerous animals and the Titanic.

 

The prompts and question stems come from a couple of different places. One set of prompts is from our TCRWP coach. I'm sorry I do not have these to share with you. They were part of our district's training and I only have hard copies. If you are part of Balanced Literacy with Teachers' College, I would ask your coach for a set of them.You also could use any questioning stems or prompts you are comfortable with such as Marzano's or Bloom's.

 

The other prompts I use are based on Reading 3D and mClass (you know, the DIBELS people). They are taken from the TRC section. The website http://www.mybookezzz.net/mclass-comprehension-stems/ has PDF files of the questions broken down into F&P levels. If you look at the screen shot below, the first PDF file will give you a bulleted list of questions and the second one will give you a matrix version of question stems.

 

 

 

bulleted lists

 

 

matrix

This toolkit was time consuming. I had to use a lot of ink, a lot of paper, and spend a bit of money to purchase the materials. I think it is definitely worth it though! After you create your toolkit, you will have instant lessons tailored to your students' reading levels. You will have talking points all ready for when you conference with your readers.

Thank you again, Vicki, for the great idea.

 

Book Club Dilemma for Low-Level Readers

In a previous post, Book Hunt, I described how I went about finding books to use for our Biography Book Clubs. I had a difficult time finding books for my low-level readers though. I searched on Reading A to Z and the lowest book I found was a level J and I need D, G, and H. I looked for some passages on Read Works, but the lexile-leveled passages on there were not low enough. So I had to get creative!

I have some old Social Studies big books that were part of a retired series. I use them to cut out pictures, paragraphs, and nonfiction text features to use as examples in various lessons (see my posts Biography Boxes and Bullets and Repurposing Those Old, Boring Textbooks). I decided to look through them and see if there were any biography pieces.  Jackpot!

 

I cut out all of the biography passages and created my own biography big book.

 

I dedicated the book to two of my students who have made great strides in reading. They will be the first two students to use this book.

 

The large print and simple sentence structure will allow my low-level, special needs students to participate in their own biography book club. They will read together with their exceptional needs teacher and personal needs assistant. They will be able to make jottings on large sticky notes.

 

Some of the passages had great text on the back. I created a flap so students could read both sides.

I also found some worksheets with short biography pieces. I cut the worksheets apart and created multiple copies of these small biography books. The vocabulary is a little bit high for the group that will use these books, but I am going to do the first read with them. Then they will break apart and read it independently and make their jottings to prepare for their discussions in book club.

Book Hunt

I have been preparing for our next book club, biography/narrative nonfiction, and since this is my school's first year using a balanced literacy framework, finding enough books at specific levels has been a challenge. 

My first step in the hunt for books was to know which levels I needed for the clubs. I know that for nonfiction it is acceptable to go down as much as 2 levels, but I am not sure how this transfers to narrative nonfiction (if you have an answer to this please share in the comments section).

My next step was to check in our school Media Center and see which Guided Reading sets matched my genre and levels.

 

Then I looked on my book shelves to see if I had multiple copies of books that matched my search criteria.

I also looked through the ancillary materials that are part of my Social Studies textbook program. Time for Kids and the Harcourt leveled readers each provided me with a set of books--yay!

Finally, I used the website Reading A-Z since I was not having much luck finding lower level books. Reading A-Z has something called multilevel books which are wonderful because you could have three different groups reading the same book that is three different levels.

 

Now I have an idex card labeled with each Fountas and Pinnell level. I recorded the books I have for each level. Now I can see how many sets I have and how many more I need.