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Hi, this is Betsy from Classroom Teacher Resources, and today, we’re going into the jungle to
talk about ‘Reading Rainforest.’
Today, I’m going to tell you about my Reading Rainforest reading advancement program. This
is a great way to motivate kids to read, read, read a wide variety of books from a lot of
different genres.
What reading rainforest is, is a program where kids read and earn different levels through
different packets of reading comprehension activities — and genres are included in
that. So students are becoming deeper readers, as well as reading a broad variety of materials.
So in the reading of rainforest unit that you’ll find that in my Classroom Caboodle
store, you’ll get a bulletin board kit to put together in your classroom so students
can really take pride in how much the class as a whole is growing as readers. Students
will have individual reading rainforest cards on the bulletin board and you can print those
all fancy-schmancy in color, or you could print it in black and white with just an outline
and let the students color those in.
You can see on these two pages, there are reading rainforest badges that the students
earn as they move up through the rainforest. And this is a great opportunity to learn a
little bit about rainforests as well. You’ll notice, here shows all the different levels
in a reading rainforest and a tarantula is at the lowest level of a real rainforest.
So that’s going to be the first badge that students earn is the ‘tarantula badge.’
So what happens is, a student is given the first packet...of reading forest level one
- tarantula, and they have to read two fiction books at their just-right level. Now that’s
going to be up to you as a teacher to let that student know what their just-right level
is, depending on the individual reading assessments that you do with your students in your district.
So students are going to write their reading level here, up here, then they’re going
to choose two fiction books and write the genre code. It can be any type of fiction
— whether it be fantasy, historical fiction, realistic fiction, or any of the other fiction
genres.
So they’re going to write the reading level of that book and I have all of my...the books
in my classroom labeled with the reading level, the title and the author, and again, that
genre code. So after they have read each book, they complete a fiction summary for each one,
and my students must use complete sentences or I won’t accept their packet.
And...so there’s a fiction summary sheet for each title that they read, and then they
get to write a story climax. So they choose one of the two books and they write a retell
of the most exciting part of that story, and then they get to quickly sketch out an illustration
of it. And once those have been completed to a high standard and they’re very neat
and tidy, they can turn that in and if they pass that level, you sign it and you can cut
out that tarantula badge and stick it onto that student’s card.
So as they progress through the different levels, they’re climbing higher and higher
through that rainforest. The students are so excited to get to that top level which
is pretty rigorous once they get there, because they’re reading chapter books in a wide
variety of genres, too.
So this is a program that could take you through your entire school year with students. For
reading rainforest, I have included a...something you can print out for the common core standards
for grades three through six. This is appropriate for any of those grade levels. There’s enough
rigor there for the sixth graders, as well as a good challenge for those third graders.
So look for it on my Classroom Caboodle store. There, you also find Reading Jedi, which is
the same type of program with a Star Wars theme. This is a great way to motivate your
students to read, read, read!