Yay! I am finished with my Print and Go resources for Journeys Unit 1 and posted it as a HUGE bundle pack.

Having an entirely new reading series can be very overwhelming but I am feeling super organized. I just finished printing and organizing my binders for the first unit. It was a lot of work but I know that we are going to have this reading series for A LONG time and I know that I will be so grateful in future years for the time that I am investing now. Here is a little peek at how I organize and use these Print and Go packets in my classroom.  

I have a one inch binder for each story. I am crazy about keeping my resources organized and neat so I use these binders to hold all my masters, samples, anchor charts, sentence strips etc... 

(I also included a cover page for the Unit 1 Bundle in case you prefer to have a large Unit 1 binder instead of individual stories)

I use the Daily Edit as a bellwork activity. There are 5 Daily Edits included in each packet. Students use the Editing Marks poster as a reference to learn consistent editing marks. Each Daily Edit page has a mini-poster in the top left corner so students can always use it as a reference. This will be an exciting new change to our Bellwork and I know it will really help my kiddos.  

Each packet includes NINE Print and Go Literacy Stations to practice the Spelling and High Frequency words each week. I don't have time to use all 9 activities every week but this allows me to change up what I do use so the kids don't get bored and it also provides consistency so the kids are not interrupting my Guided Reading Group to ask me: "What do I do?" Ugghhh, I despise that question! 

This year I am most excited about diving into the world of Interactive Notebooks. I have seen some amazing ideas and I am so excited to begin these with my students. I am loving the idea that these notebooks provide students with a resource that they can use to review and practice. These notebooks will be a great way to show our mastery and learning of each of the CORE standards. Each Print and Go packet includes directions, anchor charts and student pages to support the implementation of these Interactive Notebooks! 

Each packet includes grammar and writing activities. These activities will vary with each story but here is a little look:

Finally, each of my Print and Go packets includes a cover page for the story. I print two cover pages and use one for the front cover of my binder and the other to create a guided reading folder. 

To make my guided reading folders, I use those cheap paper folders. I simply glue on a cover page and then laminate the entire folder and ta-da, and beautiful folder that I keep at my guided reading table for the week. Inside the folder, I keep all the Leveled Reader Teacher Guides and Printables for each leveled reader. I store the 4 leveled readers in a Ziploc bag and put the bag of books with the Guided Reading Folder in my cubbies behind my horseshoe table. (Sorry I will post an actual picture when we return to school). 

I print two copies of the vertical binder labels (shown above) to: 

1. label the side of each binder  

2. label the bottom of the cubby so I can quickly find each story. 

To check out each packet by clicking on the pictures below or grab the Unit 1 Bundle and SAVE!

I will begin posting Unit 2 stories during the month of July so stay tuned! 

Journeys Reading

Hey All! Happy Summer! Between pool time, going to the gym, art lessons with my oldest daughter, catching up on house stuff, enjoying playtime with my sweet baby, catching up on my Netflix and enjoying some lazy days - our summer has been just amazing! 

Of course, I have spent some time working. I have been working on Second Grade CORE Math Units and that is just exhausting! I had to give myself a little break from math to check out our newly adopted curriculum. Our district has adopted a new Language Arts curriculum and I am really excited about it (we have had Trophies FOR-EV-ER). We now have Journeys by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2014) and although I am just getting into the first few stories, so far so good :)

I am creating these packets because one of my favorite parts of the day is small-group reading time and that time will not be possible if I don't provide my kiddos with some fun and engaging station activities. I need students to know what to do and what I expect at each station so I try to keep the activities as consistent as possible so that my students are not interrupting my reading groups with the awful "What do I do?" question. 

I have created a Print and Go packet for the first few stories (more to come). These packets include Anchor Charts, Interactive Notebook Printables, 8 Literacy Stations for the spelling and high-frequency words, 5 Daily Edit pages (LOVE!), Grammar Printables and MORE! I am thrilled to have engaging, consistent station activities so I can start training my students right away. The best part is, no cutting and laminating endless games and pieces, simply Print and Go! 

This year I am most excited about diving into the world of Interactive Notebooks. I have seen some amazing ideas and I am so excited to begin these with my students. I am loving the idea that these notebooks provide students with a resource that they can use to review and practice. Having a tool that enables students to go back and refer to previously taught concepts is amazing. These notebooks will be a great way to show our mastery and learning of each of the CORE standards. 

You can check out these packets by clicking on the pictures below. Enjoy! 

If I am missing any spelling/sight word games that you would love to see included please don't hesitate to let me know. I am happy to add anything that will make our lives life easier :) 

Be a Reading Detective!

I just posted this fun Little Detectives Reading Strategies poster pack to TpT and Teachers Notebook! This packet includes the 7 decoding and 7 comprehension strategies I teach my first graders. They really relate to these characters and reference them ALL the time when reading. These have become one of my favorite tools for students! 

I have also created the matching bookmarks. I give students a bookmark to take home and one bookmark to keep in their book box for use during Readers Workshop. We use these bookmarks during our daily guided reading lesson and I have these posters hanging right behind our guided reading table. My teammate had a genius idea and has taped these bookmarks to her guided reading table! 

ALSO I wanted to share our fun Tree Maps we did today for "Nouns I Love". We have been working on what a noun is and so I created this fun little tree map so students could write 5 people they love, 5 places they love, and 5 things they love. 

Here is my list: 

5 People I LOVE - Ellie (my beautiful daughter), Mr. Neal, Mom, Dad and My Class

5 Places I LOVE - Starbucks, Cheesecake Factory, Pizza Hut, the gym, and Weinberg Elementary

5 Things I LOVE - Bella and Marley (our 2 boxer puppies), candy, books and boardgames

After completing their tree map students used a tracer to create a heart shape and then divided their heart into sections to write all of their nouns in. This was a perfect Friday activity because like I have said before, my kiddos are paint deprived! You could seriously hear a pin drop while they were painting this afternoon! IT WAS AWESOME!!!!  The kids art turned out great! 

I learned so much about my students through this activity. I posted a couple pics. Sorry I had to blur out the name in the middle. You can download the Nouns I LOVE treemap here! 

Happy Valentines Day!