Small Group Sunday (and some freebies)

I've already mentioned on here that my OLW is intention. I'm trying to be more intentional with my planning and lessons. I especially want to accomplish this in my small groups. I thought that if I set aside a blog day for it, maybe it would help me stay accountable. We came back to school on Tuesday so already I was a day behind on my planning sheet.

 This is how much I had filled out by Tuesday afternoon at school. I had planned that day and then the next day. I was already seeing where this sheet was going to cut it for me. My top group of readers were working on a chapter book and I was struggling to meet with each group.

 This is how my sheet looked at the end of the week. Not so hot on the whole planning part. I didn't meet with groups like I had wanted and do the activities I wanted. I think part of my problem was not planning ahead. If I had planned ahead I could have asked my assistant to meet with a couple of groups each day. So Friday afternoon, I changed the format of the sheet and planned through Wednesday. I'm hoping after I meet with the groups on Monday I can finish up the planning sheet. I think I am at least starting out the week a little better this week.

I also got my fluency sheets for unit 3 complete. These have practice for long a, long i, s blends, digraphs and triple consonant blends. Of course this is the last week I'm working on unit 3 in the reading series but better late than ever. I use these as a warm up to start the group with. I have the students take turns reading rows of the words to practice their fluency and decoding skills. Here's a freebie for you:

Click here to access this freebie.
Click here for unit 1 of these words.
Click here for unit 2 of these words

I'm also sharing an updated version of my planning sheet. Click here to get a updated copy of the planning sheet. 
Hopefully you can use one or both of these sheets. I haven't read anymore in my Making Small Groups Work book. This past week was just too crazy to do much reading. I also didn't tackle any math groups at all. But there's always this week. How did you first week back at school go? Be sure to let me know if you download these freebies and how they worked in your classroom.
I'm linking up with Classroom freebies today for Manic Monday so be sure to stop by and check out the other freebies.

Please keep the student at my school, Regan in your prayers. He starts his first round of treatment at St. Jude's tomorrow.

Reading Groups and some freebies

I feel like I've been searching the whole time I've been teaching for the best ways to do guided reading or small group reading. Last year I felt like I had a pretty good handle on it because I would read with students individually. This year, I'm striving again to figure out what I want this part of my day to look like. I read a couple of interesting blog posts last week about what guided reading really was and how it had no place in the common core. I then read a response to that on another blog. (I'm sorry that I have no idea which blogs it was I was reading. I do most of my blog reading on my phone which is kind of a pain) This got me thinking. I have been planning on posting about my reading groups for a few weeks now and I was planning on calling it guided reading. I'm not really sure it's guided reading in the definition sense. I'm reading with students and working on word skills or comprehension skills depending on the day and the group. I haven't mastered the scheduling part of this or the planning part of this. I feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants on most days. I have an idea of where all my students are and what they need to work on. I make notes as I'm reading and working with them. But I don't sit down when I do my lesson plans and plan out small group lessons. I probably should. I'd really like to but I just can't get a handle on things this year. I have felt like I'm behind since day one.

Anyway, I had a few things I did want to share that I'm doing that are working well. One is these dry erase circles I bought at big lots over the summer. I put them on my reading group table and the kids love writing on them.

It makes doing word work and responding to a story really easy. Here's a couple of pictures of my students responding to a story.
Another thing that I'm enjoying is these notebooks that I made. I don't remember whose blog I saw this idea on this summer but it was genius. I have four notebooks (usually this is enough for everyone to have one.) In the notebook there are pencil pouches with dry erase markers, sentence strip dry erase boards from target, fluency practice, sight word practice and my word work activities. It is so nice to have everything at my fingertips and to be able to add to it.
I made the fluency pages that focus on our phonics and spelling pattern for the week. I offered them as freebie a while back. I am offering the next unit this post (at the end). These are based on the spelling pattern for treasures for first grade and this is unit 2. I also have some sight word phrases I got from Sally at Elementary Matters this summer. The last page is my making words activities from my falling for words pack on Teachers Pay Teachers. Which if you go check it out right now, it is a flash freebie. You will be able to download it for free until in the morning. (Check that out here.)  
(This item is no longer free. It was a freebie from Oct. 16 at 5:04 to Oct. 17 at 7:14 am)

Here are a couple of pictures from my notebook:

If the flash freebie wasn't enough freebies for you, here's the fluency freebie.



Click here for this freebie.
If you download either one of my freebies, I would love it if you would follow me here and on Teachers Pay Teachers. I would love it even more if you left me some comment and feedback love. What are you doing for reading groups? Are you weighing in on the guided reading has no place in the common core? I would love to hear what's going on in your classroom.