Monday, May 26, 2014

AAR - Fun Review and Fluency Pages

Here's a bunch of ideas you can use for both the fluency pages and the word cards in All About Reading to incorporate more review. Have Fun!


For the word cards


Use games to review the word cards. Pull out favorite family board games like Sorry or Candy Land, and have each player read a word before his or her turn. You might enjoy Bake the Cookies as a way of reviewing.


There's also a bunch of other free games--Over Easy, Word Flippers with F/L/S, A Flock of Ducks for L1, and Feed The Anteater, Be a Lumberjack, and Wake the Sheep for L2.


All About Reading Activity Bundle


For compound words, there's Banana Splits. You can find that and the Free Penguin Fun Facts book for reading or spelling practice in the free Winter Practice Activities.

If your child enjoys games, consider getting the Ziggy Supplement for some folder game options you can use for review. (These were designed to go with level 1, but can be used with cards from any level.) 

aar-l1-zzz-supplement-cover.jpg


You may also want to check out: Rhyming with Candy Hearts, which has words you can use with levels 1-3 of AAR.


 

Use the word cards to make up phrases and sentences for your child to read. Let your child also make up funny or silly ones for you (or a reading buddy) to read as well. Some kids really like that!

Pull out word cards that rhyme (start with a small number and work up) and play the matching game--mix  them up, turn them over and each player flips over 2 cards, says the words, and if they rhyme, the player keeps that pair.

Here’s an idea for kids who like to color: take coloring pages with big spaces and write review words or phrases in blanks. When the child reads the word, they get to color that space until the picture is complete.

Do the activities from the activity book more than once during the current lesson, and also bring back activities from previous lessons.


For the fluency pages:

Sometimes students do get overwhelmed by the amount of words on the fluency pages. Marie has some great ideas for using the pages to make them more fun or interesting (and there are more great ideas in the comments section to, be sure to check that out!) Check out the Top 5 Tips for Using the AAR Practice Pages. A lot of these will work for readers too. A few more ideas:

Use the viewfinder bookmark to read them.

Use the page for your reference only and write the words, phrases, or sentences one at a time on a white board.  When your child can read one line well, try writing two lines at a time.

Make the words/phrases/sentences with tiles for your child to read.

Mix up the exercises a bit more–do something from the next step and then just a bit of the fluency reading from the previous step. This will stretch the next step out a bit more, and give a bit more fluency practice, without having the practice be all together in one chunk.

Use the words, phrases, and sentences to come up with a little book together that your child can read.  Put one phrase or sentence on each page, and let your child draw a picture, or cut and paste pictures from a magazine on each page.  My kids used to really enjoy making up little books like this.

What are some fun review ideas you have used with the cards or fluency pages?

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Faithful Bloggers Festival

If you're a blogger, this looks like a great opportunity to learn how to be more effective. The sessions will also be recorded if you can't make it at the scheduled times--June 3, 4, 5 at 1pm Eastern. The link below has more info.


Faithful Bloggers Festival: One