Leveled books with high-quality photographs?  LOVE!  While I love fantastic illustrations, there’s just something about real photographs that can’t be beat!  Finn Books do a fantastic job of providing high-interest storylines while utilizing patterns found in Level A, B, and C books to promote early-literacy skills.

We all know that guided reading looks a bit different in each teacher’s classroom, and one of my favorite things to do is take a peek at how other teachers conduct guided reading.  I hope that these tips may work for you, or spark an idea that will be perfect for your classroom!

Why do I modify the Daily 5 format?  That’s simple.  Every classroom is different, every teacher is different, and every group of kiddos has different needs.  When I first started teaching I stuck with the traditional Daily 5 format to a “T.”  I’ve learned over time how to tweak the system to fit my classroom.  Here’s a peek at my guided reading structure:

Our 4 centers can shift slightly from week to week but usually we have one center for poetry, one center for handwriting, one center for word work (word families currently), and one center for sight word practice.  You may be wondering how my students work for a full 20 minutes on the same center.  The answer is they don’t, with the exception of the word work center.  The word work center is generally a craft for practicing the word family of the rotation and takes the full rotation (Ex: Making an “_at bat hat” with _at family words written on it).  I usually set up all the centers before school each day so that we can get started right away after our mini-lesson.

My school bought us some really nice book baggies that are made of sturdy nylon.  They’re cheaper than a book box, and in my opinion they are much easier to use/store.  Inside each kiddos book baggy is an alphabet chart, color chart, shape chart, file folder, and 4 to 6 books of varying levels depending on his/her reading level.  This is where [Finn Books] come in super handy.  They are already leveled for each kiddo and are PERFECT for keeping in your classroom library to let students “shop” through for their book baggies.

You can grab your own copy of the alphabet chart and file folder labels that we use in our book baggies for FREE by clicking the picture above.

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I started out by marking 2 lines in the middle of the circle.  This made it easy to know where to start one color and stop the previous color.

Then, I used the hot glue gun to get a good hold between the end of the yarn and the circle.

FYI, when I started I kept the yarn attached to the whole bundle.  This got tedious because you have to feed the bundle through the circle each time you wrap another bit of yarn around the circle.  I started cutting large pieces of yarn – it was a lot easier to manage! If you glue the end of one yarn piece down and start the beginning of the next piece right on top of the other one you can’t even see where it ends/begins.

After MUCH patience, I got the whole thing wrapped in yarn!  Phew!  I used a lot of hot glue (probably more than necessary) to get the yarn to stay exactly where I wrapped it.

I added some red ribbon as an accent in between each color.

I used the same red ribbon to create a hook for hanging the wreath.  I just wrapped it around, added some hot glue and stuck the end of the ribbon back into the glue to create the loop.

Next, I added the finished anchor to the wreath using hot glue.