Guided Reading – Comprehension Skills

Hi everyone,

I’m here to show you what we have been working on in our guided reading groups this month! My little readers have been growing so much this year. I just love to watch them work so hard on decoding new words, recognizing sight words, and practicing new comprehension skills!

Most of my firsties have been able to master decoding skills and many are recognizing most words from our first sight words list. We are now moving on to comprehension skills and I am thrilled!!

We have been using so many fun games in our guided reading groups these past few weeks and it has been a blast. Take a look at what we have been working on.

We use this matching game to practice sequencing. Students read the short story 2-3 times first. This helps work on fluency skills. We then sequence the story events by placing the pictures in order.

We also use this fun matching game to review comprehension skills. After reading the short stories a few times, we match them with the picture cards.

These question prompt cards have been very useful with my small reading groups. It’s very convenient to have questions on hand because I can’t always think of different prompts on the spot! My students pick from the cards and we answer a new question every time. I separate my prompts on different rings. I have one ring for fiction books and one for non-fiction. On each ring, there are questions for “before reading”, “during reading”, and “after reading”.

I like to switch up my activities often in order to keep my little readers on their toes. If a reading group has used the rings several times already, I take some cards out and place them in my pocket dice. The same game now has a completely different spin on it and the kids love that!

We have been working on comparing and contrasting in some of my reading groups. For those students who find this concept difficult, we play this fun game. Students choose a card and work on comparing and contrasting the two pictures. It’s the perfect warm-up game before working on this skill with a new text!

Some of my readers struggle with using important information when answering prompts and/or summarizing. In order to help them choose important information, we play this sorting game. I used this game with the whole class the first time we played. After reading a story to the class, every student wrote down a part of the story and we sorted to cards on a pocket chart. This game led to a really good class discussion and helped many of my readers understand the skill.

Making connections is a skill that comes up every year in our grade two exams. In order to help my students prepare for what is to come next year, I start teaching this skill early. We use this game on a pocket chart and play it together as a class. After reading a story, every student gets to make a connection and place it in it’s appropriate place on our pocket chart. I always save this game for my guided reading groups who need a little extra practice after my whole group lesson.

These spinner games are very popular in my class. Students love anything that involves manipulatives, even paper clips! Never underestimate the power of paper clips 😉

Who doesn’t love a good cootie catcher game?? My student ADORE them!

I made a bunch of reading comprehension cootie catchers to play with my guided reading groups. Some are for before, during, and after reading. Some are for specific reading skills such as visualizing, inferencing, summarizing, etc.

For those students who finish early, we use this scavenger hunt game. They are perfect for keeping my students engaged while I am helping those little readers who need a little extra love! Students read a short book (usually an emergent reader from my guided reading basket), pick a card, and hunt! They record their answers on the half-page recording sheet in order to stay accountable for their work.

Students love to fill in colorful graphic organizers! Not all worksheets need to be filled in with a pencil and corrected by me, especially if I’m sitting WITH the students who are filling them out! I keep my graphic organizers in a binder. Each page is in a plastic sleeve so students can simply use dry-erase markers to fill them out. The sleeves make it super easy to erase and use again.

I keep ink-friendly (black & white) copies of each graphic organizer for students who want to work on a specific page. These are great for extra practice, a writing center, activities for a substitute teacher, and/or assessments.

no prep reading comprehension worksheets

Want to know how I keep all my guided reading games organized? Simple. I keep all my cards in a plastic pocket organizer like this one. It makes it very easy for me to find a game when I need one!