Habits of a Good Reader: A Mini Unit


Our favorite mini unit is Habits of Good Readers!  We do these lessons the first week of school and it's our chance to build a love and respect of reading from the beginning of the school year!   This mini unit is the perfect springboard into Daily 5.


 Here's a bit about how it looked in our classrooms, as adapted from Kathy Collins' book Growing Readers.

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We read There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Books and talk about good and bad ways to handle books in the classroom.  Next, our kiddos have free time reading books from the classroom library and practice putting books back into their correct bin.




Next, we read Reading Makes You Feel Good and The Best Book to Read!  We LOVE these books to encourage our kiddos to talk about liking books and reading.  We also take a look at many different materials readers read.  We show examples like newspapers, menus, and brochures.  After thinking about how readers read more than just books, the kiddos take time to read some magazines from the classroom library.




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We love this silly story to introduce how readers need to protect their reading time.  As a class, we discussed actions that would disrupt our reading time.  Then we model together the negative things like talking, walking around, and wandering eyes.  After showing each negative action, we practice together the positive action. 

 

For this habit, we have the kiddos bring in their favorite book to share with the class.  Tamra and I love Olivia, so we share it with the class.  All kiddos share the name of their book and one reason why they like it/brought it in.  Together, we notice what kinds of books each other liked, find similarities and differences, and take some time for the kiddos to share their book with a partner. 

We're in a big circle, going around and sharing about our books!  In this set up, all of our kiddos can see each others books and make comparisons! 


Partners share their favorite books with each other!



We wrapped up our week of mini lessons with a book and graphic organizer.  Before we start reading, we chat about how readers think about the story as they hear it or read it.  We encourage them to practice this as we read.  After we finish reading, we have the kiddos fill in the organizer below.


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https://drive.google.com/file/d/11zn-FY_oY9nEkV_k9luPAWeEtxibb0q9/view?usp=sharing