reading groups & novels

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reading groups & novels
By Lynne

I am a remedial reading teacher and believe me, third grade students need to have a guided reading group every day. I have a range of abilities also and what I do is choose a novel on the appropriate level for each group.
I then call each group and we work on reading strategies as we read the novel. I often read the first chapter aloud to them to get them hooked. We then make predictions, list vocabulary we expect to be included etc. in the upcoming chapters. We then take the novel, chapter by chapter, covering our language arts objectives as we go. It is a lot of work at first because you have to plan for

each novel. After you have read several it gets easier. Eventually, the lower group will be able to read one of the novels previously read by the middle or upper group. At that point, you already know the novel and you just have to plan the objectives to meet the needs of the students in that group. There are lots of websites with literature lesson plans already done for you. I would look into those and tweak them to fit your students' needs. Good luck, it really can be done and it is much more interesting than the basals.