What do the children in your setting do in the morning time? In my experience, children often arrive to school at different times and they all have different needs first thing in the morning. Once the children have completed their own morning routine and settled, a Morning Reading Session is a lovely activity to do.
What do I need?
A clipboard for each child, some kind of an assessment/record sheet and one a4 page per week for signing in.
One or two coloured boxes (if desired) that contain the books for the fortnight. If you are using the boxes to organize the books, I like to make sure the child’s clipboard matches the colour of the box they should take their books from. Or you could change the colour that the child is assigned to each week/fortnight.
How does it work?
We all sit together at our group table. I put a selection of books on the table (same selection for 2 week period). For differentiation, I put 2 groups of books in 2 different coloured boxes. E.g. red box for starter readers/picture books and a blue tray for fluent readers.
Each child ‘signs in’ by making marks with a pencil/marker etc., tracing their name, or writing their name.
Self-Selected Reading: the children choose a book from their assigned box to read. The child can choose whether to read it independently, co-actively (with the adult) or listen to the adult reading it. Some children may need some guidance with choosing a book at the beginning.
Extension Activities
Some activities to extend this activity are: Creating and adding to a ‘Word Wall’ for any new or unfamiliar words the children come across. The child could look the word up in the dictionary and create a list of dictionary words in their clipboard. The child could also write a ‘book review’ when they have finished reading their book.
What are the benefits?
This activity is to begin to expose children to reading and get used to handling books. It helps when it is in a group setting, children can see each-other and the adults looking at and reading books. I find when children see others engaging in a task, they can be more likely to begin to engage themselves. Doing it as part of a group exposes children to others enjoying and using books. It can be a great activity to begin doing some reverse integration with especially if it is an activity the children are used to. It is a simple calm activity to do first thing in the morning or at any time during the day.
I hope this Morning Reading Session structure is helpful to some!
If you’d like to see the template I use, have a look at the product on my Mash store:
Reading Session Record
Any questions or comments about this, I would love to hear from you.
Mo
Autism Corner 