First Grade Interactive Read Alouds for January

Hello, friends!  Let's talk Interactive Read Alouds!  Do you use them in your classroom?  They are a great opportunity for you to expose your students to more challenging texts.  They should be about 1-2 grade levels above your students' on level reading level.  By exposing them to these more challenging texts you are able to model think alouds, encourage more critical or high level thinking, expand their vocabulary, deepen comprehension, and develop more discourse among your students.  

I have developed these monthly units of Interactive Read Aloud Lessons to guide you through all of these valuable skills and strategies.  You may think that your students will grow tired of reading the same book everyday, but I have found that it deepens their understanding of the text.  We do not read the whole text each day, but only the parts of the text needed to successfully complete the daily task at the end of the lesson.  

The texts that we use in January in First Grade can be found below (affiliate links):

Before reading the text each day, I always try to build their background knowledge on the topic or I show a short video at the start of our lesson to help with the comprehension skill or strategy that we are practicing that day.  Below you can find links to a few of my favorites for this month.

Most of those are fairly self-explanatory as far as which video goes to which story, but the five senses one goes with Dog Breath.  We focused on words and phrases that express feeling or appeal to the senses.  :) 

The Common Core Standards that are focused on this month include:

RI 1.2  Identify the main topic and retell key details of a text.

RI 1.6  Distinguish between information provided by pictures or other illustrations and information provided by the words in a text.

RL 1.4  Identify words and phrases in stories and poems that suggest feelings or appeal to the senses.

RL 1.9  Compare and contrast the adventures and experiences of characters in stories including written details and illustrations when developmentally appropriate.

Before reading, we also go over our "I can" statement for the day related to our comprehension standard and success criteria.  I include what our goal is for the day in the before reading part of the lesson plans included.  We also go over vocabulary using a routine that I include in the pack.

You can also print the text dependent questions for the read aloud on sticky notes and stick them in the book.  I like to turn the notes sideways on the paper and then cut each question apart.  I can then stick them on the specific page where I will be asking that question.  I also make sure students turn and talk about the answer to each question.  This keeps everyone engaged and accountable!

After the read aloud, students should always complete a daily task.  This allows them to practice the skill from the lesson and can be used for assessment.  They glue these tasks in the Reading Journal for completion.  I just go around and check them at the end, as well as give immediate feedback to students.  

All of the daily tasks from the week help lead up to the culminating task on Friday.  This is where I can see if the students truly mastered the standard that we worked on.  This is an example of distinguishing between information provided by pictures or other illustrations and information provided by words in a text.  I use the rubric provided to score the task.  There is also a comprehension assessment at the end of the week to check for understanding in a multiple choice or written response format.

Here are some of the other activities and culminating tasks we complete in the month of January in first grade:

Students had to compare and contrast the adventures and experiences of characters in stories.  This was a huge hit!  My students really got into choosing sides of the characters, too.  It was hilarious!

Click any of the photos from the post or the image below to read more about my FIRST GRADE JANUARY INTERACTIVE READ ALOUDS.  As always, thanks for stopping by!