Reading Enrichment Spring Lesson Plan
If I polled 100 elementary teachers across the country, and I asked them what the most challenging part of their reading block was, I am certain that many of them would give the same answer…
Enriching the high flyers.
They finish work quickly. The curriculum is too easy for them. And the standard enrichment ideas (novel studies, book clubs, etc.) are complex and not easy for teachers to grab and go.
No one has cracked the code on simple enrichment activities for students. Every idea out there assumes that the teacher will put in a lot of unpaid time to plan and prep extra lessons and activities for their high flyers.
And I already feel a little bit of guilt even typing that out. Of course, I’m committed to my students’ growth. And if that means putting in extra effort, I am willing to do that…to a certain extent.
What I wanted was a simple solution that would challenge my highest achieving students, help them grow, but all fit into my current planning time.
I can’t create more planning time out of thin air. If the work I need to do will spill out of my work week…it will begin to take away from my family time. And as a busy mom of four, that’s not an option for me. So, I created my own reading enrichment system, and I’m here to share it with you today!
Step One: Make a list of no-prep enrichment tasks that can work with ANY text.
Now, this sounds more complicated than it needs to be. If you don’t have a list of reading enrichment activities on the top of your brain, I have one made for you!
For me, I wanted to ensure that the tasks I assigned my highest reading groups would deepen my students’ understanding of our current second grade standards. I’m not a third grade teacher, so I don’t want to teach them third grade content. Instead, I want to improve their scores on our current standards.
So, if our entire class is working on main idea, so is my highest reading group. But, if they all can already do the standard - identify the main idea of a text - then I will have them working on creating a main idea and writing a text that matches it. Or, researching a topic, writing an article, and then having a partner find the main idea of it.
A quick and easy way to make any standard more complex is to change the verb. if the average 2nd grader is expected to ‘identify’, then an advanced 2nd grader can try to ‘create’ or ‘defend’.
Step Two: Differentiate the Texts
The most clear-cut way to help your highest readers grow is to challenge them with the text that they are reading. This doesn’t always necessarily have to be novels or chapter books!
Instead, I started taking my second grade passages that I was using for my small groups and making them a little bit more complex for my highest readers. I swapped out the vocabulary with more challenging words. I took some of the simple sentences and made them longer and more complex.
Every text that I was using with my on-level readers I was also using with my above grade level readers. But the lessons would be tweaked to reflect the challenge that I wanted them to face.
Check out all reading passages here!
Step Three: Pair a text with a complex task.
And here is where the magic happens! I got into the rhythm of taking that list of enriching reading tasks and pairing them with the text that I was planning on reading in my small groups that week. So, if we were working on basketball player biographies because my kids are really into March Madness this year, my above grade level readers would be working on an enrichment task that helps them deepen their understanding of that skill…using a harder version of the texts my other groups were using.
Having a list of pre-planned activities that won’t require any extra prep on my part makes lesson planning to breeze! Seriously just a few minutes a week!
Sample Plans:
If you can’t totally wrap your head around what this might look like in practice, I’ve attached a couple copies of my lesson plans for the next couple of weeks below. These are spring themed passages and basketball themed passages. Perfect for March madness or just the start of the spring season.
Feel free to take these lesson plans and use them in your own classroom! And feel free to use the enrichment task list with other texts in your classroom. And get ready to watch your highest achieving readers grow a ton!
