Reading Group Organization

The teaching blog community that I subscribe to has started an organizaition blog party of sorts in which teachers share some of their favorite organizational systems they have developed over the years. This is a topic near and dear to my heart so I plan to share some of mine over the next few posts. I hope you find something that is useful to you.

Organization of the many, many ....things teachers need in their classroom is a hot topic among my teacher friends. We are always looking for new and efficient ways to organize the sheer amount of teaching tools we have in our classrooms. One of the projects I took on last year towards the end of the year was my multiple copy books that I use for reading groups. I am fortunate enough to have a very well stocked book room at my school which houses tons of leveled books for teachers to use for reading groups, but as I am a tad OCD in nature, I have purchased my own through Amazon and Scholastic so that I never have to hunt down a missing copy or god forbid...wait for a set (these types of snags frustrate me as I like to have things as soon as I realize I want them). The books I have purchased tend to be the ones I have found success with in third grade so I developed thorough plans for them which live in my reading binder. This way, each time I rotate through my groups I have a set of plans to base my lessons on which include summaries for each chapter (in case I have a substitute run groups), vocabulary words, literal and inferential questions, and culminating projects. My book sets range in levels to accommodate for the various abilities and skills of my kids. I also add to my collection and tweak my plans each year.

Shelving is very abundant in my classroom so I used to just house my sets on them near my reading table. This worked...but I wanted them to stay grouped together and look neat and organized. I ran across these green tubs in a friends classroom. She used them to house her cd player and books for Daily Five. I loved the way they stacked so I went to Walmart and cleaned out their stock.

These are my tubs, labeled and looking neat!

One more thing that I wanted to share that I developed this year is this chapter book summary sheet. I have my kids complete one box for each chapter that they read. This has proven to be very helpful in guiding our discussions and forces kids to clarify for meaning as they read. It also gives me a great indication of student comprehension for those group members who are less inclined to verbalize during group. If you copy it double sided, it can last for 8 chapters. Much better than sticky notes all over the place. I three hole punch it and have my kids pop it into their Reader's Notebooks. During independent reading, my class often has their notebooks open to this organizer so they can record notes, etc. while reading and it is all stored in one place. It has also proven to be a great record of progress as far as the detail kids can take note of as their reading skills develop.

*Still playing with embedding google docs...let me know if this doesn't work for you and I'll keep trying.

Another great organizational tip from a teacher blogger... why didn't I think of this? 

Happy Friday everyone!