Five For A Fabulous Friday!

All week my husband has been complaining about how slowly the week has gone by, but I'm still on vacation so the week flew by!  That means that it's time to link up with Doodle Bugs for:

At the end of June and the beginning of August, I took a Reading course offered by Sally Grimes.  One of the purposes of the class was to make a toolkit to help teach Reading.  Here are some of my projects:

This is a Questioning Hand.  I made mine double-sided because I couldn't fit the graphics and words on one side.  You can use this hand to help with summarizing and/or asking and answering question during or after reading.

Similar to the Questioning Hand are these Story Sticks:

The questions represent different levels of thinking skills.  (sorry for the sideways picture!)  I wrote the questions on tongue depressors.  After/during reading, a student can pick a stick and answer the question.

Another project was a describing hierarchy:

The hierarchy starts with naming the noun.  For example, a pencil is a writing instruction used to write down information.  Then you include all the attributes (details) about the pencil.

I also made a set of Questioning Cards.  The green cards are used before reading; the yellow cards are used during reading; and the red ones are questions for after reading.  I also included a Morning Message example that shows how I review/reinforce literacy skills throughout the day.

The big project was a Story Kit.  I did mine on Officer Buckle and Gloria by Peggy Rathmann.  During a read-aloud, each student would receive a sentence, a character, a vocabulary card or a lesson that is attached to a paint stick.  When they hear their sentence, word, .... mentioned during reading, they raise their stick.

There are so many ways I can use this story kit.  Making this kit involved a lot of work so I'm excited to try it out with my new students.

If you've ever had experience with any of these reading tools, I'd love to hear how they worked out!

Have a wonderful weekend!