Student Conferencing and RTI

So, I was sitting with my students today during silent reading time....

at the end of the day.

Wait.

Question.

Does your school have a "school-wide" silent reading time? When is it? Ours is at the end of the day. I'd much rather it be in the beginning of the day. That way, once they read the books, they can take their A.R. quiz and go to the library to get another book to take home that night...right? Seem logical...I think.

Anyway, during silent reading time, I walk around and listen to my students read to me. Since I do it during this time of the day, I don't really do it during my small group time...I mean the conferencing part. OF COURSE I listen to them read during small groups...

What I use is so simple, but it works really well...so I thought I'd share it with you.

The next page shows an example of how I set up the class  roster. I put all the same leveled students in the same row (sometimes I have to take half of a second row, and then to start a new level of students, I go down to the next row.) I then circle the rows of students with different color crayons/markers—this just gives me a better visual of how many students are in a level, especially if I take more than one row for a level. Then I just write the dates in the box for the day that I “conference” with the student. I mix them up, but I try to see my lower level students twice a week and my higher students once every other week. 

I walk around while they are reading and sit next to the student and listen to them read for a little bit, and then we discuss what they can do independently and what they need to work on, which is the “Student Notes” page.

Click any of the pics to download it!

Also, I wanted to share something else that I do with my Sound Mapping Boxes. 

I teach one of the groups in our intervention groups (steps to success?? walk to intervention? rti groups?? whatever you call them) that is currently working on the first skill - short vowel words.  But, actually, when I was doing my sound boxes with them, I noticed they all DO know their sounds...well, most of them...BUT, what I DID notice is that when I dictated a sentence for them to write (on the sentence part of the page), they could NOT remember the sentence, even if it was just five words. 

SO... I busted out some counters....and instead of using the sound boxes up top for the SOUNDS of the word, we used it to count out the WORDS in the sentence.

So this one was "Sam the man is a fan." (can you guess which sound we're focusing on? ha!)

So they counted the words and put the chips in the boxes.

(I copied the pages onto color card stock and then laminated them so I wouldn't  have to keep copying off pages.)

Then, they wrote the sentence below.  After they wrote the sentence, I made them circle the capital letter and the period 

(OH. MY. GOSH!! WHY, oh WHY, is it so HARD for them to know how to write a sentence?!)

After they did that,  they took the counters and put one counter over each word, so that when they didn't have enough counters or had counters left over, they would realize they didn't have the sentence correct.

One last thing...don't forget to go enter the HUGE Halloween giveaway!!

I have been reading TONS of great answers!!

YES!! One of my ALL TIME FAVE Halloween movies is Hocus Pocus!!! LOVE LOVE LOVE!!!

and someone mentioned Beetlejuice - never thought of that movie as a Halloween movie, but it totally rocks too!!

And the comment about the "poor teacher" costume - haha!!

Some cute costume ideas (for my girls) too!!

And...

P.S. - I didn't know Australia didn't celebrate Halloween?? Well, welcome to the party my Aussie Friends!! (See?? this is why I LOVE blogland!!)

Now quick!

Go enter - FIVE different rafflecopters to win!