Reading Groups

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Home : 2003 : September : 18

Reading Groups
By Ramona

Chicago Teacher, I am a 1st grade teacher and I have reading groups and centers 4 days a week. I don't know what your county uses to determine reading levels, but we use the DRA(Developmental Reading Assessment). If you
are not familiar with it, it is a program that has leveled books for the children to read. I take a running record (how many words they read correctly in a passage or whole book). They receive a percentage (90-94% is instructional) and we ask comprehension questions (whew!). If the percentage of the running record is below 90, the text is too hard. Anyway, after getting all of the DRA

scores, I group my children according to their instructional level. The levels are 1-44. We have leveled books in our school, so I use those for my reading groups. The students can take the books home for practice. I generally have 5 reading groups.

We do this every 9 weeks and it's a lot of work, but it's worth it. I do all sorts of activities in my reading group like tracking print, high frequency words, word wall words, comprehension, and the list goes on.

While I am working with my reading groups, the other children are doing centers.

I would suggest that you get the book by Fountas and Pinnell about Guided Reading. They have one for primary grades and intermediate grades. It is a great resource.

I hope this helps!