I was cleaning out my cabinets and came across these blank dice from our old math manipulative kits. They came with little round stickers, so I tried to come up with a way to use them. With the brainstorming help of our fabulous reading coach, we came up with these small reading group dice helpers.
Each child gets 5 dice after they read a leveled reader in small group. Each of the five dice have a different skill set on them.
Die #1 (types of sentences) question, statement, command, exclamation, interjection, dialogue
Die #2 (syllables) 1 syllable, 2 syllables, 3 syllables, 4 syllables, 1 syllable, 2 syllables
Die #3 (story elements) plot, problem, solution, characters, setting, genre
Die #4 (character traits) funny, caring, greedy, unfriendly,trusting, giving
Die #5 (parts of speech) singular noun, plural noun, proper noun, adjective, helping verb, action verb
After reading the story, have each student roll their dice. Whatever the five dice land on is what the students will need to answer or look for. For example, for chapter one, they would need to look for any commands, any words with 2 syllables, and any adjectives, given that is what their dice lands on. They would also need to tell what the problem in the story is and which character/s have giving traits, if their dice lands on those.
You will need to teach the students how to properly roll the dice. Otherwise, you will have dice going everywhere.
Of course, you can always put whatever you want on the dice and make them work for you. :)
