A Year of Wonders

Aloha friends!  Summer is flying by for me.  I cannot believe it is already July!!  I had a list a mile long of things I needed to do and I have barely made a dent.  However, I have been enjoying myself a great deal, swimming, working out, catching up with friends and binge watching lots of Netflix!!

One thing that I can cross off my list is finishing up my Grammar Centers for the Reading Wonders series.  Actually all of my Wonders products are complete now!!!

Each of these units covers the grammar skills that are covered in the Wonders units.  They are great for Daily 5 word work rotations or small group activities.  Each unit comes with activities that cover a skill and a practice sheet for reinforcement.  Much more engaging than a workbook! Each also has a color and black and white version to make printing easier and more affordable.

I also have Morning Work for each unit.  These include practice for grammar, spelling and vocabulary for each unit.  The skills begin simple and spiral through the year.  My kids did so well with this format this year!

Finally, I have Spelling Lists for each of the units that include printable lists for On-Level, Above Level and Approaching, vocabulary words and definitions, high-frequency words and sentences for spelling dictation.

Spelling Unit 1 is free in my TpT shop to give you an idea of what's included in the other packs.  It does not include everything that I added to the other units.  I guess I should add that to my list ;)

Hope your summer is progressing well and that these resources will come in handy down the line.

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Workin' Through Wonders

Aloha!! Are you as excited about the weekend as I am?!  I don't understand how short weeks seem longer than regular weeks.  My theory is you have to pack as much as you can into 4 days that you usually do in 5!

This week marks the 5th week we have been in school.  I feel like my routines are starting to firm up and students are starting to be a little more independent.

The week started out with a little visitor to our classroom.
(Well not really little!)

I opened the closet to get some paper out and I saw something scurry out.  I closed the closet and this large fellow was sitting there.  

As long as this is not on me I am okay.  I knew the kids would freak out, so I calmly said "Wow, this guy is huge! I am going to take a picture of him.  Does anyone remember what type of spider he is?" Kids yelled out "Cane" spider and "King" spider.  I explained it was a Cane spider and that they came from the sugar cane fields.  I spelled it on the board and then we talked about how they were harmless and help eat the bugs in our classroom.  I took a picture and they all got back to work.  This guy slunk away and I was happy with that.

This week I felt like I had gotten a good feel for our new Wonders reading program.  I am picking and choosing  the most important pieces and I have my Daily 5 routines up and running.

Here is the schedule of my Literacy Block for the Week.

That first block of the day is spent going over the skills for the week.  I have adapted our morning work packet to include the essential skills that Wonders covers for the week.  

Every Monday I give a pre-test to see who needs help with the spelling skill.  If they pass the test they don't need to take the test on Friday.  Wonders does provide differentiated spelling lists for each of the levels.

I place my spelling list up on the board for the week for different activities and for kids to read them each day.  That little pocket chart is for Word Families that I got from Really Good Stuff.

On Tuesday I read the story in the Anthology to the class and we go over the vocabulary together.

I then have the students partner up and read it.  Then they do the vocabulary page in their practice books.

I try to get in the writing by having them respond the the essential question for the week in their writing journals.

On Wednesday through Friday is when I differentiate and meet with all of my students.  I am so happy we received the leveled readers that come with the program.  I can easily see what skills my students need and go from there.

I can also work with my lower group on high-frequency words, spelling and fluency.  My higher readers can work on the same skills, but I can get them to do more critical thinking, writing and comprehension questions.

My Daily 5 rotations are basically the same as last year. My Word Work centers are all skills that we are covering and they also include activities for spelling.  I changed my Writing center a bit and have focused the students on what the Wonders program suggests.  This week we were on Unit 1 Week 3. The essential question was "How can a pet be an important friend?"  The skill this week was writing a friendly letter.

I made some simple writing templates to put in the center.  I told the students that they were going to write a letter to their pet and tell them all the reasons why they were a good friend.

They did such a great job and they were so excited to write their letters and take them home. The kids that did not have a pet could write a letter to an imaginary pet or just a letter to a friend.  If you would like a copy of these templates click on the picture to download them from Google Docs.

Over the last few weeks I have created flashcards and lists  for my small groups and whole group activities.  I have also put together spelling lists at all the different levels that Wonders has provided.

Included are spelling lists, spelling cards, vocabulary cards, and high-frequency word cards for Weeks 1-5.  If you are using Wonders this might be helpful to have all of the lists in one place to use for small groups, centers or homework.

This will be a freebie the month of September.  I would love to hear your thoughts and know what I should add for Unit 2.  Head over to my Facebook page and you can grab it in my Facebook freebie section.

Are you new to Wonders as well?  I would love to hear how it is going for you and any tips you might want to share :)

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Differentiated Spelling

Aloha friends! I hope this post finds you healthy and happy. I know these winter months you catch those bugs and it can bring you down!  There are a lot of teachers at my school that are out sick and I am doing my best to stay healthy.

Today I wanted to share how I run my spelling program in my classroom.

I don't have  a set curriculum, except the reading series that our school has had for over 10 years.  We use the Harcourt Trophies series, but it is not at all aligned to Common Core.

In this series there is a spelling program that is supposed to go along with the stories that your class reads weekly.  For years I used this spelling program because that is what all the other teachers did.  It was not kid friendly and didn't follow any particular order.  This is the list for one of the first stories in our series...

The skill is ed, but the kids can't even spell the root word!!  My great spellers had no problem and loved the challenging words, but I found that many of my students were just bombing the weekly tests and I felt so bad for them.  With many of my ELL students this was so hard.

How can you boost a child's self confidence if they fail their tests each week?

So I looked around to see what I could find and supplement on my own, but found nothing that I was happy with.  Many of my students needed some basic phonics skills, but what about the other students that already had those skills?

So I decided to create my own program.  I took the basic skills that kids need to know to succeed in spelling and created two sets of lists.

One a simple list that teaches a basic rule or skill, and a second list using this same rule, but using more challenging words. I also made each list only 10 words which I think is all they need at this age.

At the beginning of each week I give a pre-test.  I give the simple list of words.  If the students get a 90% or better on the Pre-Test then they get the challenge words.  If not they study the basic word list.

This first student needs some work with this skill

This student seems to have this skill down...

So I give each of them a different list to study for the week.  I tell them the first list is our regular second grade list that we all have to know.  If we don't know it, that's okay we are here to learn it.  If they already know it then I will give them the challenge list.

This really helps those kiddos that are struggling to feel better about having a different set of words, and my smarties feel so proud that they get the challenging words.

For homework each week I have the same assignments:

Monday- Write your words 3 times each
Tuesday-Write your words in ABC Order
Wednesday- Write 10 sentences using all of your spelling words
Thursday- Study for your Spelling Test

I simply have them glue the list into their Spelling Composition Book and they do all of the assignments in there each week.

Somebody needs to check their spelling on number 6...

On Fridays  I give the two different tests.  It takes a few minutes more, but...
the results are much more positive!!  No matter what list they have, if they get a passing score that's pretty great in my book!

So I wanted to share my program with you which is in my TpT store.

There are 34 lists for the year, and ideas and worksheets to go along with it.  I even have holiday word lists to add some fun.

Recently I had a request for just the worksheets and not the whole set of lists.  I know some of you have your own program that you love, but this packet could be used for any spelling program.  It has all of my homework sheets along with printables that could be used for enrichment or during center time.

 Some of the enrichment activities include, writing their words in another language, write synonyms for their words, and creating a word search.  There are lots of choices to keep your students challenged.

If this looks like it would be helpful to you hop on over to my TpT store and grab yourself a copy.

If you have a great spelling program that you use, I would love to hear all about it!!

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