Get Ready to Read Together
It’s important that you spend as much time reading with your Explorers as possible. We’ve developed the schedule below to serve as a guideline for your weekly meeting with your students. Feel free to tweak things to fit your personality and mentoring style – enjoy yourself and engage your students!
- When you arrive at the school, come to the library and pick up your students’ folders to review. Take the time to learn about your students and how they’re progressing.
- Spend the next few minutes with other Reading Coaches going over the activity for the day. You’ll be able to do the activity in your time with your students to help them develop character and build peer relationships.
- Meet your students in their classrooms. Be sure to greet your students by name and get to know them. Ask about how they are doing and take an interest in what’s going on in their lives.
- Spend a few minutes doing the daily activity with your students. Be enthusiastic and engaging– have fun with your students!
- Visit the library and, based on the students’ reading levels (in their folders), choose an appropriate book to read together (see the Accelerated Reader Tip Sheet). Let the students choose books that they are interested in! If you find that your students are choosing books that are too easy, challenge them! Encourage them to select books slightly above their reading level.
- Review the book.
- Help the students identify the title, author, illustrator, and publisher.
- Look at the pictures throughout the book and make a prediction about what’s going to happen!
- Scan through the book and identify a few vocabulary words.
- Review title, author, and illustrator again.
- Sit side-by-side and begin reading together aloud. Help guide the students by moving your finger below the words as you read. As the students gains confidence, let them take turns reading one-two pages at a time.
- As important as it may be that a student learns to read, it is just as important, if not more important, that students understand what they’ve read! After you’ve finished the book, take a few minutes to let your students work together to retell the story in their own words. You can use the “Retelling Checklist” to help guide them.
- Visit the computer lab to take an Accelerated Reader comprehension quiz together. Guide and challenge your student, but do not give away answers.
- With your students, fill out the “What I Read Today” form and put it in your students’ folders.
- If time allows, play literacy games, talk about your day or read more books!
- Return your students to class.
- Spend the last 10 minutes of your time at the school debriefing with other Reading Coaches and the Reading Explorers leaders. Talk about what’s working or any issues you may have had.