During Independent Reading, students continue to practice what they’ve learned during Modeled/Shared/Guided Reading. Independent Reading offers students additional opportunities to read. In order to become proficient readers, students must be provided with opportunities to read, read, and read some more!
Everyday we have Reader’s Workshop where students participate in shared, modeled, and guided reading activities. During these times we have a short mini-lesson focusing on the strategies readers use to decode and understand the texts they read. Students put into practice what they learn when they do Listen to Reading, Read to Self, or Read with a Partner during Daily 5.
Reader’s Workshop minilessons focus on reading strategies, behaviors, and expectations. Students are encouraged and expected to apply what they learn about during their Reading Options time. To give students opportunities to apply what they’ve learned, our school provides each classroom with a set of leveled readers. These books are leveled by color to correlate with the Fountas and Pinnell leveling system and also by number to correlate with the Reading Recovery leveling system.
The books above are not nearly enough to sustain my voracious readers for an entire years, so I’ve purchased and collected over 2,000 books for our classroom library. They are sorted by genre, topic, or author. Head on over to my book bins page for more information! Otherwise, take a peek at what our classroom library looks like (below).
Need book labels? Download them here: 
To house their self-selected books for the week, students have book bins. The cart/bin system above is called the “Leveled Reading Browser Cart” manufactured by Copernicus Educational Products Inc. GOOGLE it to see which companies have it for the best price!
Students select “Just Right” books – – at or below their independent reading level. On Fridays, I allow students to select books that are above their level (animal nonfiction books are very popular choices!). We utilize a SMARTboard timer file to keep us on track during our book shopping days.
Download our Book Shopping SMART Notebook File
Do you ever wonder what to put in your student’s browsing boxes at the beginning of the year? For my first graders, I gather a class set of the Kindergarten shared reading books that my students should be familiar with from last year. Maybe your 5K teachers would be willing to part with some of their titles if they are not using them at the moment? Worth the try! We use these class sets of Kindergarten Shared Reading books during the month of September. We also add laminated concept/word charts in addition to early concept (shapes, colors, numbers, seek and find, wordless, word) books. By mid-September, we’ve started Guided Reading, and also start book shopping our classroom book bins.
I like to change things up every now and then after first semester, to give us something new and fresh and offer students a little more variation in their routine. After semester one, I have students begin recording the books they’ve read using a variety of recording sheets.
Download Read to Book Recording Charts
