Read-Along Story Time for Beginning Readers, 5/30/13

 Read-Along Story Time for Beginning Readers, 5/30/13

Attendees
Today's story time started out very small, with just one newly-five-year-old boy and one first grade girl. I was nervous about catering to the abilities of kids at such disparate stages of development, but I was quickly calmed by the fact that both kids were really into everything I was sharing with them. Both could read a little, too, which was great! Halfway through the action song listed below,  three more kids came in, so our total for the day was five.

Discussion: What Can You Do With Water? 
The kids thought this question was tricky, but they came up with swimming, splashing, drinking, washing hands, and using an umbrella to keep the rain away. They also informed me that water is in oceans and rivers.

Name That Fish
I took down the names of all the fish and sea creatures in Marianne Berkes's Over in the Ocean in a Coral Reef, then found photos of them to show the kids on the iPad. They recognized the clownfish, the stingray, and the dolphin, as well as the seahorse and the pufferfish. The others we learned together.

Over in the Ocean Action Song
Once we had all our sea creatures named, we sang the song from the Marianne Berkes book - without the book. I had the kids call out the numbers and act out the different creatures' movements  according to the suggestions Berkes provides in the back of her book. All the kids - except the two youngest and quietest - got really into it.

ISH Chant 
I wrote my own chant based on the ING chant on the website for Ling and Ting Not Exactly the Same, which I used at a previous story time. We made the words fish, dish, wish, and squish, and the kids could read all of them but the last one.  

Read-Along 
I found this poem on Scholastic's Teacher website, and printed it up for the kids to read. We read the poem twice. The first time we used a call and response format. The second time, we just went straight through the poem. I also asked the kids to identify the two words in the poem that were also in our ISH chant. They found fish, and I helped them find wish.

Bag of Verbs 
We acted out ten verbs in all, based on what the kids chose from my bag. The highlights were wiggle, hop, and shuffle.

Read-Aloud 
Our read-aloud this week was A Fish Out of Water by Helen Palmer (who is apparently Dr. Seuss's wife!) The kids were great about making predictions and they all said they enjoyed the story. I would have liked to do more to have the kids interact with the text, but I was a bit stumped about how to make that happen.

Write and Draw Activity

I created this write and draw activity. The image is of a fishhook dangling into the water, and the questions beneath the image ask, "What would you use for bait?" and "What kind of fish do you think you would catch?" Some of the kids didn't get it and just colored the page. One boy invented a fish called the "ocean stinger" who had an elaborate backstory, including the fact that he must be caught with chocolate cake filled with strawberry yogurt and blueberries. The first grade girl drew a fish and a crocodile, and a deep-sea diver, but assured me the crocodile was friendly to people.

I use the same hello and goodbye songs at almost every session. Click here for the tunes and words. For descriptions of each of my story times, click here.