Partner Reading

     As I’m sure many other teachers out there are, I am a huge fan of Pintrest. When in doubt about something it is so easy to pop a key word into Pintrest and get hundreds of ideas from other exceptional educators out there. As of lately, we have noticed many of our students are forgetting some of the expectations we have during partner reading. In the past we have sat down and discussed with our students success criteria for acceptable partner reading. However, we have never had an anchor chart posted in the classroom to remind students of this. Here is where Pintrest comes in; rather than use Daily 5 time going over success criteria with the students again, we found this anchor chart on Pintrest created it prior to the morning bell and simply went over each point with our students. Here is what we created and went over with students:

We now have a new anchor chart (and after reading this blog you will know we are a huge fan of anchor charts) to post near our literacy and Daily 5 wall to remind students of different ways to do partner reading.

Partner reading is important for the following reasons:

• it is a cooperative learning strategy that allows students to work together and encourage each other while reading an assigned text
• it allows students to take turns reading and providing each other with feedback, asking questions and making predictions together as a way to monitor comprehension. 
• it provides a model of fluent reading and helps students learn decoding skills by offering positive feedback
• it provides direct opportunities for teachers to observe students as well as offer individual or partner conferencing 

Personally, as an educator, I feel it absolutely necessary to never stop learning.  I believe a huge part of that is not only working with your partner teacher, but also being able to share your ideas as well as research and embrace others. Pintrest is a site worth signing up for as a teacher because it will guaranteed you never stop learning.

www.pintrest.com