Easy Classroom DIY - Guided Reading Phones

Confessions: I love DIY, and I am a Pinterest junkie.  Evidence: My husband and I made this out of our broken fence, and we had a BLAST!  (Details to come, in case you want to try something similar in your classroom.)

My first classroom DIY project was to create guided reading phones when I started teaching ages ago.  They are insanely easy and very inexpensive.  More importantly, they have been incredibly helpful for my young scholars.  The tutorial is below, but first, here's how they help: 

Fluency: Students can hear themselves read, so they are more inclined to notice when they are "Robot Reading".  (Audacity is another great tool to help with this.  They can record themselves, listen to their finished work, and evaluate it with a rubric.)

Self Monitoring: In the younger grades, the children often do not listen to what they're saying as they read.  The Guided Reading Phone is a great reminder to pay attention to what you're saying and make corrections when it doesn't make sense.

Focus and Independent Work: It can be difficult for young scholars to focus on their own thinking when people around them are reading out loud.  If they are reading the same book, children may find themselves reading chorally with the person who is the best at decoding, rather than doing the work of decoding on their own.  The phones are a great way to help children focus on what they are doing and prevent distraction.

Fun! Above all, reading should be fun!  My biggest goal is to inspire students to catch the love of reading.  I do everything I can to help them experience the pure joy of reading a good book.  If a Guided Reading Phone makes them willing to try it, I'm all in!

The phones are totally worth it and have been really helpful for my little ones.  You can buy them for about $5.00 each at almost any education store.  You can also make them with a couple items from the hardware store.  I've included pictures of the packaging at Home Depot (where I got my supplies), so you could see the skew number.  They were much harder to find when I made a few new ones last week, so I thought more details might be helpful for you!

Here's what you need:

All you do is fit them together in the shape of a phone.  Couldn't be simpler!  I usually wipe them off with an antibacterial cloth after making them, just to be safe.

Happy Reading!