Guided Reading Made Fun

A group of my students read the book, "Dictionary of Animals." I wanted to teach the students to categorize information so we first practiced categorizing our group. The students came up with some creative categories: boys and girls, people who can only speak one language and people who can speak two, everyone wearing yellow, blue, or white. After reading the book we looked back to see some facts about each animal category then I gave each student two note cards with facts. The students had to look back in the book to see the category that their fact fit.

One of my student's guided reading books was an informational book that taught how to make clay creatures. Instead of just reading the book and answering the guided reading questions we actually took the time to follow the steps of making clay creatures! This book instantly became a favorite of the student's. We were able to complete the activity and read the book in 20 minutes.