WABE 2010

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Written by Marcia Brechtel, OCDE
The following is a ten day cycle (these could be periods, not days) using basal-based student-generated text.
This process meets ELD standards at the Beginning, Early Intermediate, and Intermediate levels for story retelling, comprehension, beginning reading, writing and listening/speaking.
Day 1 – Develop a narrative input from a pivotal story out of a unit from your reading series. Take the same story; copy the pictures and words. Glue the words to the story on the back of the pictures. Tell the story with pictures as if you were truly story telling. Attach to a background with tape.
Day 2 – Review with word cards, using key vocabulary from basal. Make this a shared story.
Day 3 – Review the narrative input with conversation bubbles.
Day 4 – Review the story with a story map.
Day 5 – Small group (leveled, struggling readers) dictation of a story retell. Do this in Group Frame style with students telling and teacher writing.
Day 6 – Review, retell and do any editing/revising that is within the capabilities of the students. Remember, the focus for this strategy is emergent reading, not the writing process, so this needs to be their language, not yours.
Why? Emergent reading skills, like one-to-one correspondence are modeled and taught this way.
Day 7 – Copy story retelling on sentence strips and follow steps for reading as with the cooperative strip paragraph.
Day 8 & 9 – Guided Reading lessons with the story retelling strips.
Day 10 – Open the basal and have a Guided Reading with the basal text. Meanwhile, your at/above grade level readers have finished reading all the stories in the unit. This group has finished only one, but it is a grade-level story. You have taught all the reading skills from the basal TE for that grade level. You have gone into great depth with one, rather than dragged your non-readers through four.

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Is Your Mama a Llama? By Deborah Guarino
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The Gingerbread Man
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Joseph had a Little Overcoat by Simms Taback
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The Little Cloud by Eric Carle
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Henny Penny by Paul Galdone
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The Three Little Kittens
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Does a Kangaroo Have a Mother Too? By Eric Carle
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What Does the Wind Say? By Wendi Silvano
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Oh Look by Patricia Polacco
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I Went Walking by Sue Williams
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Hush by Minfong Ho

Project GLAD: Reading group using Group Frame
Before lesson:
Copy each sentence on sentence strips in EXACTLY same color as the original Group Frame (with sketches if you have them). Complete sentences may use more than one sentence strip.
Type story into booklet and make copies. (Use Publisher: Publication Types: Programs: ½ letter booklet, total page number needs to be a multiple of 4, so it copies correctly).
During lesson - Set-up expectations:
“We’re going to read this writing written by authors, and rebuild it on the floor”
Give 2 rules: 1. lay strip on ground, no upside down reading, 2. can’t touch anyone else’s strips
Rebuild paragraph:
1. T gives complete sentences to kids. (Complete sentences may include more than 1 actual sentence strip.)
T reads each sentence fluently while pointing to the sentence in the coop paragraph, and kids read with you. After reading each sentence, stop and have student lay the correct sentence on the floor.
Read title together. Kid puts it down on floor. Ask student, “Are you right? How do you know?”
1 st sentence- read together, kid puts it down. “Are you right? How do you know?”
2 nd sentence– read together, kid puts it down. “How do you know?”
Etc…
When whole story is built on floor, have students reread story with you while pointing to words.
2. Phrases: “Good readers pay attention to phrasing while reading. Phrases are groups of words that we read together.”
T chops sentences into phrases and hands to kids.
Have students count words in their phrases as you hand them out. Or have them read the words they know in the phrase.
T reads first sentence fluently, points to first word and says, “Who has this phrase? If you have first phrase put it down”.
T points to second phrase and says “What word begins the next phrase? Who has that?”
“Are you right? How do you know?”
DO NOT READ WORD BY WORD, always model fluent reading.
When whole story is built on floor, have students reread story with you while pointing to words.

word by word
T cuts up phrases word by word, hands out to kids.
Ask kids to count syllables in each word as you are handing them out.
T and students reads complete sentence fluently. Teacher points to first word in sentence, “Who has this word?” Point to next word etc… Kids build the sentence word by word.
Teacher says, “When you put word down, you have to read it aloud”
Build whole story. AT THIS POINT, THE COLOR OF THE WORD DOESN’T MATTER. Kids rebuild the story based on the word, not the color the word was written in originally.
When whole story is built on floor, have students reread story with you while pointing to words.
Reading games
Modified cloze Game:
Students close eyes, T takes out one word, students raise hand when you know what is missing. Student tells how they know. Then student get a turn to take a word out while everyone has eyes closed.
Clues game: (like “I spy”)
Focus on phonemic awareness or rhyme – “I’m looking that starts with /t/.” “I am thinking of a word that rhymes with ‘mat’.”
Focus on vocab: I’m thinking of a word that means _____
Focus on phonics: “I’m looking for a word with the short a sound.”
Focus on letter formation/conventions: “I’m looking for a word that starts with a capital letter.”
Anything else teacher wants to focus on.
Kids practice reading their “good fit/ just right” book
Hand out the story typed up in a booklet. Tell students, “I have some writing here written by some authors. Please read it to __ number of adults (and have them sign the back)”.
Send kids to office, Reading teacher, parent volunteer to read their story.
Then send a copy home to read to parents as homework. Students put books in their “Good Fit” book box at school.