I'm still here!

I know I have been missing in action. School has been in full swing now. We have finished our first running records and are working on the AIMSweb testing. It drives me crazy that we have sooo much testing already and we are in the first 4 weeks of school!! I learned this summer, however, to really dig into the data and read it. I’ve been able to identify the reading strategies that my students need to work on! I’m very excited.

We began our centers this week without the guided reading center. I wanted to start, but I really needed to know that my students could get started and work on their own. It’s gone pretty well. I chose to only do three centers this year.

1.   Computer center. Students log onto kidblog to post a response every week. Then they log onto NoRedInk to practice their grammar skills using characters from the media as their subjects in the sentences. Finally (for now) they will log onto Learn2Earn and they log their reading and create responses based on their readings. They earn coins for their participation to purchase things at the Owl store! It’s pretty awesome. They do a respond to a generic prompt for their book, and then you can score it and give feedback! 

2.   Read to self. Right now, students are going there to just read. Next week, I’ll add a writing portion for them to reflect on their reading. 

3.   Word study. Students have a word study journal. They create a unit page that tells their pretest score, their words for the unit, and then they have several pages that they complete in their journal. (Word sort, sentences, etc…) They create flash cards and put them on a ring so they have their cards to practice where ever they go!

They are starting to get the flow down. We just need a few more days of practice!

Last Tuesday, I went back to school! I am taking classes to get my Master’s with a Reading Specialist license. It’s very overwhelming, however I have a great support system for this journey. If all goes well, then I will graduate in the fall of 2017. It’s going to be a long 2 years, but I will be a proud graduate of Carson-Newman College!!

How’s school going for you?!