Close Reading in 1st Grade - Summer Edition

This teacher has a BIG smile on her face for lots of reasons.

First and foremost, THIS:

Parker and I found out last Tuesday that we were having a BOY!! Our sweet little Theo will be arriving in early October and I literally have not stopped smiling since we found out.

:) :) :)

The second reason I just plain giddy these days is because my students took their end of the year diagnostic tests online and the vast majority of them did AH-MAZING! I am so proud of them. This year I teach in a high poverty, title one school and it was quite the learning curve for me coming from a very affluent, high-performing school in Las Vegas. Many of the skills and standards I taught at the beginning of the year were geared towards early Kindergarten, but these kids have just blown me away with what they were able to accomplish in just 8 short months.

Okay, short bragging session over, but I am sure you other 1st grade teachers can relate to that proud, proud feeling that you get as you see your kiddos get ready for 2nd grade. It is truly remarkable!

Onto what this post was supposed to be about... CLOSE READING! I had been hoping to get my Summer pack out earlier, but just couldn't get around to finishing it/uploading it until last night, so I apologize for the delay. My kids have been working on a few different passages the past two weeks.

For non-fiction we went with parrots:

and for fiction I chose a story that had a "cliff-hanger" ending:

My highest two groups are just pros at this skill by now and I just sat back and snapped a few photos as they read and re-read their passages with their pencils and highlighters in hand:

As always, we went over some vocabulary and used evidence from the text to answer questions about our non-fiction parrots text:

Our fiction story was a little trickier this week as we had to make a big prediction and put our inferencing skills to the test:

While we probably won't complete ALL of the stories in this summer-themed pack, I will be sending home quite a few of them for the summer! The kids are well-trained in how to respond to the questions, so I am hoping a little practice with these skills over the summer will keep them sharp!

I put the summer pack on sale through Tuesday (5/13) in case you would like to grab it!

Nonfiction texts included:

- Parrots

- Dolphins

- The Sun

- Ice Cream

- Independence Day

Fiction texts included:

The Sandcastle Contest - a story about a boy who enters a sandcastle contest and eagerly awaits the announcement of who wins

Look What I Caught! - a story about a boy who finds a big, red crab at the beach and doesn't understand why his mom and sisters aren't as excited as he is

Learning to Swim - a story about a boy who gets scared in the middle of his swim lessons and makes him mom very proud

My Summer Vacation - a story about a girl who overcomes her fear of flying to vacation in Hawaii

Pool Party - a story about a girl who is about to throw a big pool party when all of a sudden a storm threatens to ruin it

For those of you who have tried my close reading passages, I hope you and your students have enjoyed them! My students have shown so much growth and I hope yours have too!

If you want to try the winter or spring ones you can see them here: