Bubble Pages for READING: What do you need to consider?

Weekly Reading: Each day, I have two weekly reading centers.  My teaching partner and I created a little schedule for sharing the responsibility of creating quality material to use in these centers.  Typically, we have one center that is fairly lengthy to really practice our comprehension skill for the week.  We leave this center out for a large portion of our week.  The second weekly reading center changes daily. We mix it up between our weekly grammar, vocabulary, and comprehension skills.

Reading Notebooks: Each week, I also have an interactive notebook activity that my students must complete.  My teaching partner is AMAZING at creating anchor charts.  Depending on the skill, she may create an anchor chart for the students to copy or complete in their notebook.  For other skills, I use interactive notebook activities.

Magazines with Friends: Remember when I said that our format loosely follows the Daily Five?  This is a center that I created to follow the “Read with Someone” aspect of the Daily Five.  I have an entire post and freebie about this activity {here}.  My students really enjoy kicking back to read a magazine article with a friend and complete a quick graphic organizer.

Fluency Plays: Also following the “Read to Someone” portion of Daily Five, my students also read fluency plays.  Deb Hanson at Crafting Connections has FABULOUS fluency plays for upper elementary.  My students ALWAYS look forward to this center!

Reading Story: My reading story center is designed to adapt the “Read to Self” idea to upper elementary!  (My kids have time later in the day to just sit and enjoy reading.)  The reading story center has one question per day for students to answer.  I utilize Runde’s Room’s Building Better Reading Response forms to help my students continually work on creating great reading responses.

Mentor Sentences: I also have my students practice our grammar skill through our weekly mentor sentence.  I use Jivey’s Mentor Sentences for both in class instruction and centers.  Rather than assigning them the homework page as suggested, they complete this during the Mentor Sentence center.

Word Work: I also have a word work center that my students complete to keep the Daily Five idea running throughout our centers.  My students really enjoy The Paisley Owl’s Word Work for Upper Elementary.

Next, comes the fun part….or at least it’s fun to a differentiating nerd like myself! 🙂  I pick random colors (usually based on the colors of my classroom), and create a checklist of things that students must complete throughout the week.  I try my best to think of what each “group” of students will need.  I try to think of where they are, and what activities will help them grow and reach the next level of learning.  I try to consider who needs to be reading aloud (such as fluency plays or magazine articles) often?  Who needs to have the most practice with weekly reading skills in order to master them?  Who can afford less time working on grammar?  Which group of students might benefit from reading their story additional times?  Ect.  Then, I create a checklist based on the answers to my questions.

I LOVE the flexibility of these bubble pages.  Typically, I have a bubble page for my high students, a page for my lower students, and another for my average kiddos.  However, those three options may not always fit the needs of my students.  If that’s the case, I develop a bubble page specifically for the student or group of students.  If I think of something I want to add to my set up, I can easily adjust my bubble pages by reducing something that may not be benefiting them as much.

I’ll be sharing a follow up post Thursday full of frequently asked questions!  If you have questions, I would love for you to comment below so I can include the answers.  🙂