Reading Groups in Kindergarten

Hello Kinder Tribe friends! Heather here from Learning with Mrs. Langley and today I am all about reading groups! Actually...on most days I am all about reading groups! In kindergarten the BEST teaching comes during these small group times. I get to chat with my kiddos, see their individual needs, and really make a difference when it comes to reading.

Reading Groups didn't just "happen" for me. It took me the better part of a year to get a good routine and learn how to group my students according to their needs. If you want to read more about how I do that you can see that HERE. We use DIBELS in our district as our assessment tool so I talk a little about that too. 

Today I will be focusing in on my ON LEVEL group and some of the CVC word work we have been doing together. They love these activities! 

#1 Warm up! 
We start our warm up by reading CVC words together and really focus in on pointing to each letter and reading each sound. We concentrate on one vowel sound at a time. On this day we were working on middle E words. 

#2 Blending
 As students go through the process of learning to read they get to the point where blending two sounds starts to happen pretty naturally. I've noticed that kids will read the first sound then blend the last two together. This doesn't lead to natural sounding reading and they end up reading everything in chunks. I learned this painful lesson when I moved to first grade and spent the entire year trying to get kids past this. It was frustrating! 

My second year in first I started having my kiddos cover the last sound in a CVC word and just focus on blending the first two. By ending with that vowel sound you don't get a hard ending and blending into that last sound is more natural. Students can drag out that vowel sound while their brain processes the last sound in the word. It sounds something like heeeeeee/m (read that middle e sound as a short sound!) to get the word hem. As they practice this it gets quicker and quicker. I tell them to cover the last sound, blend the first two, then say the last sound fast! 

Cover the last sound, blend the first two, then uncover and say the last sound fast! 

I give them the same page in black and white to practice throughout the week. They keep them in their browsing boxes. 

Practice pages can be used in groups and sent home to practice blending anywhere! 

#3 Building Words
After we warm up and practice blending we play a game to build words. This activity has them spinning for beginning and ending sounds while the middle e sound stays constant. Once they spin for the sounds and write them on the lines they determine if the word is real or make believe. A lot of great vocabulary discussions come from this activity! 

Work on fine motor skills (spinning is hard work!) and CVC words at the same time. 

This activity has them building words with tokens first (not pictured) then writing the sounds. In addition to being a great word building activity it also gives me a chance to work on some handwriting issues with each individual child. Just one more reason to love small groups! 

Dry erase markers are our favorite! Slip pages into page protectors and they erase easily. 

Of course I use my little readers from our reading series and all of the small group materials too from Reading Street (I love their small group stuff!) but this is what I supplement for hands on word work with me. Once they learn these routines I can use these in an independent center. They especially love the spinner activity. 

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If you would like to see any of the above activities in my store you can see them HERE. These tips for sounding out and blending CVC words can be used with any of your CVC materials. Thanks for stopping by KinderTribe today. Be sure to join the KinderTribe group on Facebook to connect with other KinderTribe friends.