FAQ - What material do you use for teaching your strategy groups if the students are not reading from the same text?
Margaret Mooney once taught a whole guided reading lesson using a brochure she found in her hotel room. I can still see the rivoting picture of the eyes of a sea lion, staring out of the brochure begging the children to open to the center to see and read about the Seattle Aquarium. That is Margaret, proving things don't have to be as they have always been. Students don't always need the same text, because we aren't teaching a "book". Instead, we use materials that are available and interesting to students, and teach skills and strategies that will enable them to successfully navigate their own self-selected material. Margaret modeled how differently she thinks about instruction, materials, and the worthiness of the children in our care. Once our minds were expanded to what could be, the possibilities for materials and ways to teach became exciting and endless. Here are a few different resources that we use for teaching students in small groups. You will notice in each group the students are all reading their own books.
Courtney uses a white board to teach chunking. A white board and a pen are one of our go to resources for our work with students.
|
|
The CAFE Menu is the anchor for this lesson as this group of boys are all reading a book by the same author but different books in the series.
|
|
Joan anchors this lesson is the class read aloud. All students are part of the reading and learning that takes place during the read aloud. It becomes a perfect shared resource for group work. She also uses pieces of construction paper to document learning and to make their thinking visual.
|
|
A picture book that was read to the whole class becomes a tool to use to reinforce the strategy taught in the whole group that is also the strategy this small group is working on. In this case it happens to be a retell.
|
|
A student magazine is the perfect tool to model text features. These students each got a different magazine to practice their reading and understanding of text features.
|
|
Margaret Mooney's teaching, writing and publishing career began in New Zealand as an elementary teacher, principal, professor, administrator along with working for the New Zealand Department of Education. She has worked in the United States promoting literacy instruction. Margaret has written the Books for Young Learners Teacher Resource , Text Forms and Features: A Resource for Intentional Teaching , Reading To, With, and by Children
, and Developing Life Long Readers (Ready to Read) . In 1998, Queen Elizabeth II appointed Margaret as an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to education, particularly the teaching of reading. We are grateful and thankful for the years we have called Margaret our teacher.
| 
