Roll and Read: My New Favorite Activity!

Several weeks ago I stumbled upon the most amazing resource ever: Roll and Read! Now, maybe I have been living under a rock, but I had never seen this before! Maybe it has been more popular in the younger grades, but anyway, It has become my (and my kiddos, too!) new favorite activity!

If you are like me and have never heard of roll and read, here's how it works:
The paper has a sentence or sentences for each number on the die. The students roll the die, tally the result under the correct number at the bottom of the page, and then read the sentences out loud. After they have read the sentence, they repeat the process. Great fluency practice!

I first found this roll-and-read from Shari Edward's post on Scholastic Top Teaching using lines out of the Dr. Seuss book Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories.

First of all, I absolutely adore the stories in this book- they all have a wonderful message.  The kids loved meeting Yertle and especially Gertrude McFuzz. So when I pulled out the roll-and-read sheet, the kids were so excited! They loved that their favorite lines were included and that they could read them over and over and over! I think some of them secretly rolled the die just right so they could read certain lines more than others- oh well, they were reading! The sheet also had a place where the kids tallied the number of times they rolled each number, which we then turned into bar graphs and the kids compared their graphs with others' around them. It was a great math connection.

A few weeks ago, I read one of my favorite stories aloud- Hooway for Wodney Wat.

See it here on Amazon!

If you haven't read this one before, it's a must for any classroom. Poor Rodney cannot pronounce his R's, and his classmates tease him. However, through a hilarious turn of events, he becomes a hero and the classmates cheer for him, hence the title. It's a great lesson on acceptance and being proud of who you are. Anywho, I decided that it would be fun to create a roll-and-read for our fluency Friday activities using lines from the book. The kids were IN LOVE! Of course they loved reading the lines pretending they also had trouble pronouncing their R's,  but they made sure to really pay attention to their emotions as they read the lines. They could really get in character!

The kids love the roll-and-read activity. It's hands on, fairly fast-paced, and even my most struggling readers can participate. I'm sure there are all kinds of ways to differentiate this activity, but for now, I will just enjoy the sounds that fill my classroom when these babies make their appearance!

Click on the link below the picture to grab your own copy of the roll-and-read for Hooway for Wodney Wat!  I'm not the most tech-savvy, so when you download it there will be an extra blank page- my apologies! I couldn't get that darn page to go away!!

Wodney Wat Roll and Read 

You can also pick up your own set of FREE dice clip art from First Grade Brain. Let your creativity run wild!!!

Do you use roll and read in your classroom? If so, I would love to hear how you use it and with what resources!