Made It Through The First Week <actually just 2 days!!>

Whew! Has it been a week. I have 26 second graders right now. It is looking like we may get another teacher, but until our enrollment period is up, we just do the best we can. Out of that 26, 8 are native Spanish speakers and another 11 received RTI services. My work is cut out for me!!

Below is a little bit of joy that brought into my life....a 'real' treasure box that I got at Hobby Lobby. This is how I 'rewarded' myself for teaching my 20th year of school. It seems like just yesterday that I was furiously trying to organize my <then> Montessori classroom! My kids are pretty impressed with it and asked me if I went scuba diving and found it! hehe

This is a book that I shared with you a few weeks ago. It was recommended during our Common Core training. It has assessments for all grades <even up into high school> and I am using a phonics screener to assess my students. The theory behind it is that students read at a different phonics stage than they are able to spell, so to adequately meet their needs we have to know what type of patterns, blends, digraphs, etc. they are able to read and this information, in turn, will help us determine which phonics levels meet their needs in spelling.

click here for more info!

This is the first page of the phonics screener...it simply assesses letter names and letter sounds and progresses to the different vowel sounds, nonsense words, short vowels, long vowels, affixes, and multi-syllabic words.

We got this freebie from TpT to send home to our parents in the hopes of gaining more info about our kids. All you have to do is click on the pic to go and grab it!