reading multiage class

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reading multiage class
By Melanie

I have a 1,2,3 classroom of 20 students. The key to success for me has been management. Please read my post on the Center Activities Board where I explain how this works. Find the Center Activites board and then look for
the Listening Center Post just a little ways down. Then read my post where I describe my independent centers. (It says for JHE - independent centers.) The first 1 and a half hours of my day are spent with my students working in their folders and I am doing guided reading with groups. You can do guided reading with the first graders as well. I also alternate it with guided writing

for them at least once a week. Shared reading, pocket charts etc. are all important for emergent readers. You can make it interesting for the rest of the class if you pull out phonics work, rhyming patterns, synonyms, etc. from shared reading after the text is well known by all. Math is done in groups as well. I work one day with a different grade level on new concepts. The next day that group is with my aid or with a parent for guided practice of that skill. The third day they are practicing it or another previously learned skill independently. That way I get to work with each grade level every third day. Read alouds are an important part of the day. I usually read picture books, but I also will read chapter books. We work on prediction, connecting to the text and other comprehension skills during and after my read aloud.
I also have independent (SSR) where students read books at their level for 25 minutes. They all have their own book boxes (cereal boxes) with many, many books to read and reread. This is especially important for emergent and beginning.
Reading is really my easiest part of the day in the multiage classroom. You can work on analyzing and comprehension with your fluent readers and word decoding with your youngers. Group your students by their reading level and then take care to pick good books at their level and work on the next skill they need. Do you have leveled books to choose from? That is very important for emergent and beginning readers.