Brain Warm Ups and Key Word Summaries

It's time for guided reading groups.  The students come to the table, find their seats and get ready to begin.  It's time for a warm up.  A brain warm up!

We get settled in and warm up our brains to get ourselves ready to read.  A quick review helps get us focused and is a great way to review a few skills.

My youngest students might use read an ABC chart or other linking chart.   One of my first grade groups is working hard to nail down those short vowel sounds.  Those vowels can be tricky for us sometimes!  

 Another way to we do brain warm ups besides linking charts is chunks and word parts.  You can print them on colored paper and put them on a ring.  Then run threw the word parts quickly with your group.

I also keep a notebook with posters in it for the students to read to warm up before reading.  These are especially good for RTI groups too.

Whichever way you choose to do a warm up, be sure it is quick.  One to two minutes.  You just want to get them ready for the work they are about to do.  Warm ups can be a good way to cycle back over different phonics skills to be sure they haven't been forgotten also.  Then on to the guided reading lesson!

Second grade has been learning how to write summaries using key words from the text.  This was a bit hard at first for my readers but we are quickly getting good at this!

First we practiced during guided reading by completing the beginning and middle of the story together.  

Then the students finished reading the story and completed summarizing the end in their Reader's Notebooks.  They wrote their key words on the side as they read and then wrote their paragraphs.

Another second grade group practiced summarizing a non-fiction book- Ants.  We took it section by section as natural breaking parts to the text.  We did this part together during a read aloud.

Seahorses was another book we read and summarized.  This time students jotted down key words on their marker boards and then used the key words to write summaries on pieces of colored chart paper.  Chart paper is very exciting to use!

Learning to pick out the important words helps students to summarize, learn important vocabulary, and then write about the text in their own words rather than copying out of the book.  This is one of the easiest ways for students to practice this important but difficult skill in an easy and fun way.

This week, students are going to choose their own non-fiction book to read and summarize.  I am going to do a Book Tasting event with them to help them choose a book!  They are going to love it!  They've each been promised their own chart paper to use and then display the summaries.  It is fun to see their excitement about our next project!

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