Last week, I sent a survey out about my Guided Reading Warm-ups and am so thankful for all of your responses!
There was a LOT of positive feedback (thank you!), as well as suggestions, and a whole lot of questions. I wanted to answer as many questions as I can, as well as let you know the exciting updates I have planned for this resource over the summer!
I had too many questions to include here, but I condensed the most frequently asked ones below. If you still have a question, please feel free to ask in the comments or email me at brenda@brendatejeda.com and I’ll be glad to chat!
First of All, What is It?
If you’re new to these, this is a comprehensive kit of resources to help you with your small reading groups. It’s designed to quickly review important skills before students read their books (or as stand-alone skills practice in whole-group or small-group settings), and includes resources for you to use during and after your book-reading as well.
I created this resource because when I conducted guided reading, I found myself pulling resources from lots of different places and often wouldn’t have something to quickly target a specific skill that came up during our reading. I found I wasted a lot of time looking for a resource or thinking of an example for a skill, so I wanted an easy-to-use resource that had something for every skill at my fingertips.
My Guided Reading Warm-ups Bundle has 4 main components:
- 1-page warm-ups: perfect for a quick review of skills. The complete bundle currently includes 181 warm-up pages for levels AA-J.
- Skill cards: more practice for targeting specific skills. Currently includes 658 skill cards, including comprehension cards.
- Teacher strategy tent cards: foldable cards that stand up as a model for students. One side has a teacher script and the other side has the strategy, along with an example to teach the strategy to your students. Currently includes 74 tent cards.
- NEW Phonological Awareness Bundle– warm-ups, skill cards, practice pages, assessments, and teacher guides with intervention tips!
- Everything is also included in digital form (Google slides), making it great for virtual, as well as in-person, learning.
HOW DO YOU USE IT?
In this blog post, I describe how I used the Guided Reading Warm-ups in my classroom. I also plan to make videos in the near future to further demonstrate using them on my YouTube channel, so make sure you subscribe to get notifications of those!
IS IT A LOT OF WORK TO PREP?
This resource does take some work to put together. In order to use it most effectively, it is best to have all of the components ready to go, so that you can access them at your fingertips when you need them.
However, it is SO WORTH IT! Having something for every skill that comes up during your reading groups is just priceless. It’s a huge timesaver and will help you stay organized and know exactly what to do with your groups.
CAN I USE IT WITH MY CURRENT READING PROGRAM?
Absolutely! Although pretty comprehensive, this is a resource designed to supplement your current reading program, to help fill in the gaps where you need them.
HOW DO YOU DIFFERENTIATE?
There are plenty of warm-ups and skill cards at each level for you to differentiate based on your students’ needs. With over 200 warm-ups and 800 skill cards, you will find resources for everyone!
DOES IT ALIGN WITH THE SCIENCE OF READING?
YES! I’ve loved learning about the science of how kids read and have recently revised my resources to align with this research-based approach.
This huge resource aligns with the science of reading in the following ways:
- It follows a sequential phonics skills order: letter sounds, CVC, digraphs, blends, CVCe, R-controlled vowels, vowel teams, and multisyllabic decoding
- Each level builds upon the skills in the previous level
- Decoding using phonics is the major component of this resource
- Incorporates other important skills, such as fluency and expression, vocabulary, comprehension, and self-monitoring.
IS IT A GOOD RESOURCE FOR REMEDIATION?
Yes, these are great for targeting specific gaps your students need more practice with. In fact, many teachers tell me they love using these for intervention! The warm-ups are short and easy to use and the skill cards include drilling of skills in a fun way.
WHAT GRADES IS THIS FOR?
I separated the bundles into 3 groups to match grades pre-K-2. However, as I always say, levels are just a guide and not a strict rule, so of course, you will have students across multiple levels and in levels that aren’t necessarily designated as their grade level.
As a guide, the levels correspond in the following way:
- Pre-K: AA-A
- Kindergarten: Levels AA-D
- 1st Grade: B-I
- 2nd Grade: HIJ (this may not carry through the entire year for all of your 2nd graders, but will definitely help the first few months of 2nd grade- even longer for students in need of extra support).
- Pre-K through 2nd grade: Phonological Awareness Bundle
HOW WILL THIS HELP ME WITH MY SMALL GROUPS?
These are set up to support you before, during, and after your small-group reading. You’ll have the warm-ups to start off your lesson, the teacher tent cards to use during reading, and the skill cards for more targeted practice after you listen to your students read.
IS IT USER-FRIENDLY?
Yes! In fact, in my survey, the overwhelming response for what teachers love most about it is that “it’s easy-to-use” and “keeps me organized,” with “students love them” and it’s comprehensive” closely behind.
Once it is prepped, it’s just so easy to use and you’ll find something for every skill your students need at these levels.
WHAT SKILLS DOES IT COVER?
Here is a list of some of the skills included:
- Print concepts, such as left to right directionality, 1:1 correspondence, return sweep, letter vs. picture discrimination
- Beginning reader skills, such as picture discussions, letter names and sounds, reading labels, matching text to pictures, rhyming
- Phonological Awareness: rhyming, alliteration, isolation,blending, segmenting, phoneme manipulation
- Phonics Skills: CVC, blends and digraphs, silent e, r-controlled vowels, vowel teams/ diphthongs, alternate sounds (c/g/y), inflectional endings, multisyllabic words, contractions, compound words
- Reading Passages: Short stories or sentences with the above skills
- Sight word fluency
- Fluency and Expression: fluency phrases, reading bold words, using punctuation, reading dialogue
- Reading Comprehension: making inferences, making predictions, summarizing/retelling, identifying the main topic/idea, visualizing, cause & effect, using text features, story elements, noting details, self-monitoring, author’s purpose, genre, schema, fact/opinion
- Vocabulary: figuring out unknown words, idioms, synonyms, antonyms, multiple-meaning words, homophones, using pronunciation guides
As you can see, this bundle is very comprehensive! If you’d like to purchase the Guided Reading Bundle and feel organized and confident about your small reading groups, you can grab it below:
Tejeda’s Tots Shop (use code totsvip10 for an extra 10% off)
If you have any more questions, comments, or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to email me at brenda@brendatejeda.com!
Get your FREE Guided Reading Warm-ups Sample below!
