Trading Spaces

Hello there!  It is Jessica from Hanging Out in First here and I have come to hang out with you today!

A few of us have gathered together for Trading Spaces Tuesday.  That means that we have all swapped places for the day!  I want to thank Amy for having me. It is an exciting opportunity to be a guest blogger and to get the opportunity to "meet" all of you!

I wanted to share a little about guided reading and goal setting with you today.  Guided reading is something that I have done with my firsties for quite some time, but goal setting is a completely different story!

Are you required to have students track their own progress and learning?  Set goals for themselves?  This is a newer thing in our school that they are requiring of everyone.  Our upper level teachers have kinda always done it through learning portfolios and graphing and what not.  But my challenge this year has been to figure out how to get my firsties to track their own learning and to understand how to set reasonable goals.  Seems like a very difficult task!!  Firsties are still learning that they have control over their learning and that they need to be responsible for it.  To have them responsible for tracking it is yet another difficult skill to teach them!

So....here is what I came up with.  This guided reading student goal setting chart has all of the levels A-Z listed.  I simply have students color in the space that they are starting on (at the beginning of first grade, most of my kids start around level C or D).  Then in my reading conferences with my students, we discuss where that student should be within the next month or two (we do it each advisory).  This becomes the student's goal.  The next advisory, they color where they are and see if they have met their goal. Then we set a new goal!  I have been using this all year and it seems to be working.  My students have an easy visual of where they are and they can see if they have met their goal. If they meet their goal, they get an award during that advisory's assembly!

You can grab it for free here!


This is also a great tracking device for myself.  I am able to better track where my students are in their guided reading so that I can pull appropriate materials for them.  And I can share it with my students' parents so that they can see their child's progress!

I hope that you can find ways to use it too!

Beginning Sound Books

For those of you who read my Kewanee post, we had a wonderful time.  We were delayed a day because of a huge storm that happened at the same time we were ready to leave.  My oldest was in the basement for most of the evening, so we knew we should not chance it for her sanity (and ours)!  After many delicious pork chop sandwiches and rides that I used to do many times over which now make me dizzy, we are home and enjoying a beautiful day before the week begins (along with the busy schedules).

I was able to finish my series on beginning letter sound books.  I have noticed for some kindergarten students, that many repetitions with books at an emergent level are necessary.  This is especially true of children that come to school with little or no literacy background.  So, I created emergent readers that will help reinforce the letter sounds that children are reading.

Our school uses a program called Jolly Phonics.  I think it is a wonderful program!  It teaches children the sounds of letter and letter combinations in a specific order.  It gives the students a story, a song, and a motion that go along with each sound.  I used this order when thinking about the sequence of the books and the progression of the level of difficultly in them.  Here is the order they use:

I just stuck to beginning sounds (for now).  Now that the series is complete, I am making a bundle of all the books on my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  Here is what comes with each book.  This is an example from the letter S book.

This page gives you gives you ideas about how to use the book along with how to use the Running Record.

This page gives you the CCSS standards that correspond with the book.  Vowel books have one more standard addressed than the consonant books.

This page gives you resources to look up if you are new to giving Running Records.  This page also describes the criteria I use for establishing different levels of reading (independent, instructional, frustration).  I also describe my rationale and the order of the Jolly Phonics sequence.  Here is a look at the whole book.

The book also comes in black and white.  I plan to laminate and bind (maybe with some fun duck tape or Washi tape) the color version and use them again and again.  The black and white copies I will make and have the students keep them in their book boxes for Daily 5.  Each book in the series varies in number of pages.  The progression also introduces the students to more advanced sight words as you go through the series.  The vowel books have long and short sounds in them.  Each book is a an "A" level according to Fountas and Pinnell.  That means that these books are very patterned and the pictures closely match the text.  There may be new vocabulary in the books as well.  There are 2 exceptions.  The F Letter Book and the Q Letter Book are both level "B" according to Fountas and Pinnell.  Either the pattern changes more frequently, or the books have a return sweep that (more than one line of text on a page) that the students must account for when reading.

This is what the Running Record looks like for each book.  This is a great way to see if your students are ready to: tackle harder emergent readers, have a good grip on the sound associated with the book, understand 1:1 matching, and use picture clues to solve new words.  It's a multi-functional assessment!

That's it!  22 books are in the bundle.  If you bought each book individually, it would cost you $44.00.  I am listing the price at $35.00.  I am also putting the bundle on sale for an additional %15 off for the next 24 hours!  Click on either picture below and it will take you to the bundle.

I am also offering the first book in the series the Letter S book for free for the next 24 hours.  Pick it up and try it out!  Click below for the freebie!

Hope you are enjoying your Labor Day!

Theme Freebie #2

It is soooo hot here in the Midwest.  I feel like one big puddle!  My daughters and I went to the local bowling alley where they had a special for two hours of bowling, a pizza, drink and shoe rental for $9.99.  We met some of her friends and had a blast!  Then we came home and read for about an hour.  My kind of day!

I was thinking what else I could spruce up my classroom with, now that I know my theme.  Here are some guided reading text level signs that I made for my room.  If you haven't guessed it already, I am a huge Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell fan.  The work that they have put into their guided reading levels is amazing!

Here you go!  Click the picture to get your free signs!

Happy Thursday everyone!