Read to Me Tuesday

I wanted to have a day focused on read-alouds, so I chose Tuesdays as Read to Me Tuesday.  But not just read-alouds, but also learning to read.

It's pretty simple, actually.  As a reminder, here's our Tuesday list:

This is a loop, just like Monday's.  Wherever we leave off is where we start next time.  I love doing loops.  It makes me feel like we're fitting a lot more in than we technically are.  Haha!

Fairy Tale is just grabbing a fairy tale book off the shelf and reading one.  I have several fairy tale books, with stories from all over the world.  I have an Alaskan one, an Indian one, Andersen & Grimm, Andrew Lang's entire set, a Ukrainian one, Folk Tales of Germany, etc, etc, etc.  I like fairy tales.  :)

Student Choice is just what it sounds like.  I have a list of all the kids' names, and the next one on the list chooses a book.  We read that book at each Student Choice slot until it's done, then the next kiddo gets to choose.  This could be anything they want to read: picture books, novels, cartoons, the newspaper, fiction, non-fiction, whatever.

I alternate a science book and then a history book.  Right now we're reading Viking Tales by Jennie Hall.  Next we'll be reading The Burgess Bird Book for Children by Thornton W. Burgess.  We usually do narrate these, and sometimes the kids want to do a project with it (or sometimes I see something that might be a fun project and present it to the kids as an idea if they want to pursue it).

Wisdom is usually a Miller book (a series by Mildred A. Martin) or The Children's Book of... series by William J. Bennett.  I have enough of those to last most of our school days and just rotate them in.  I'm sure I'll mix others in there as I happen across one at book sales.  :D

1-on-1 Reading Instruction is more complicated, and yet it's simple.  We split up into pairs, as noted on the schedule.  Peanut teaches D.  He's learning his letters yet, so I have a curriculum I put together for him (since I don't teach preschool or Kindergarten, or even really purposely teach kids to read, I didn't have anything on hand, and I didn't like the stuff I was seeing already put together).  She works out of that.  I show her what to do - the instructions are pretty clear - and then off they go.  Piglet teaches E.  She knows most of the letters and is reading around a 2nd grade level or so, so Piglet helps her learn to match the upper- and lowercase letters, what sounds they all make, or the names she doesn't know, and then E practices her reading with Piglet.  I assigned the Trouble to me.  He needs a special way of working with him, and it's better that I do that than his siblings.  He is at the point that we just practice reading out of the McGuffey readers at his own pace, and I teach any phonics that come up as we go along.  I didn't even get to do word cards with him very much like I did with Peanut because he rushed through that part too quickly.  :P

Read-Aloud is my turn to pick a story.  Right now we're reading Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

And Student Read-Aloud is their turn to practice reading to the rest of us, not just one-on-one.

That's really all there is to it!  We usually don't do more than about 3 at time, because it's a lot of sitting for little boys.  ;)  They do enjoy the stories, though, and I'm glad I can get some read-aloud time in with them once a week.