When it all comes together...

You know when you are teaching and you know the way you WANT to teach, but then you are handed a textbook and you feel stuck... I felt like I had the tools, but wasn't sure how to use them...

UNTIL NOW!!

YAY!!

My district created an amazing curriculum guide to help us have a well balanced literacy block and its the first time that lesson planning has been FUN.

Yep. I said it. Lesson Planning is FUN! :)

(at least reading...math on the other hand... still working on that!)

The first full week of school we settled into our read to self and writing workshop routines.

A room full of reading kiddos is about the cutest thing ever!

They were so excited to get spread-out spots!

We are working hard on writing books as we start writer's workshop! I love starting with blank books to see what the kids choose to write about. It is so interesting to see who stays on topic, who likes to draw, who likes to write... I learn so much about their writing from it!

This week we started word study in full force! Blending, word building and word study stations!

For ages I had all these little letters that were in a plastic bag and I never used them. But this year for word study I'm making sure I do a better job with word building so I used the letters, some file folders and zelcro to make some word building folders! I LOVE them! at this point. The kids put the letters we are using down on the lower strip and then take them off to build the words 

(the stretchy snake cards are from Deanna Jump's guided reading packet)

 Last year our school bought us some more letter tiles so I organized those in bead cases from Michaels! There are not enough little sections for the letters, so I had to double some of them up. Each box has enough letters for two kids!

We started word study stations this week...

and taking it VERY slow! 

I love how Daily 5 has everyone learning the routines for the station at the same time, so I start with a couple of different easy stations to help the kids build stamina for working quietly. 

We have started with rainbow words (using short A lists), building our sight words out of play-doh, word family games, and stamp a sight word (you can find it here)! 

There was so much more I wanted to get done this week, but we are still busy getting to know each other too! More on this week's teamwork time in the next couple of days! :)