Note: This post contains affiliate links. This means that if you make a purchase after clicking on one of these links, I will receive a small compensation at no additional cost to you. Thanks for your support! My district adopted Wonders reading curriculum this year. There are so many components! Leveled readers, decodable readers, vocabulary cards, high frequency cards, interactive readaloud cards...as I opened box after box, I quickly became overwhelmed with the idea of keeping it all organized and easily accessible. Now that we are a quarter of the way into the school year, I have perfected an organizational system that really works for me, and makes my weekly prep a breeze. I'm sharing it here in hopes that it will help someone else who is overwhelmed with the task of organizing all of these materials. Since there are six units, I went with a rainbow color-coded system. This goes well with my classroom decor, and, if you've read my blog before, you know I'm a bit of a nerd with my color coding (see my first grade classroom reveal post and my Pre-K organizational post). You can easily use this system without color-coding, however! It would work just as well with a uniform color scheme, as long as everything is labeled. EDITABLE binder covers and spines found here! I purchased three-ring binders and cubby bins in the six colors I was using. I found the binders at Target, and the cubby bins (with the exception of orange) here on Amazon. Confession: I really, really wanted orange cubby bins that matched the rest of my set, and the only ones I could find on Amazon were transparent. I finally ordered these directly from the Storex website. They were super pricey compared to the others, but I haven't regretted it. In fact, it makes my teacher-heart happy every time I look at my shelves. I told you, I'm a nerd when it comes to color coding. I divided up all of the leveled readers and decodable readers by unit, and then put them into the cubby bins in order by week. I used these EDITABLE blank labels to make them pretty! It took a bit of time initially, but now they are ready to go for small groups for the entire school year. Bonus: the ESOL teacher who comes in to support some of my kids knows exactly where to find them, and I don't have to remember to set them out for her each day. The real time-saver is my binder system. It took quite a while to set up, but now it's done--forever! I have one binder for each unit, which has tabs inside for each of the five weeks in the unit. Behind each tabbed page is a page protector. I divided all of the materials by week--the high frequency word cards, the visual high frequency word cards, the vocabulary and oral vocabulary cards, the small group cards--and placed them inside the page protector. Now, when I'm planning, I just flip to the tab that has the upcoming week's materials, pull everything out, and put it in my rainbow drawer unit, with the exception of the small group cards. Those go into the bin with the readers so my small groups are literally grab and go. I put the interactive readaloud cards for the week on top of the unit, as they are too large for the drawers. So fast and easy! When the week is over, I slide everything back into the page protector and then flip to the next page. I love not having to dig through cards every week! My only problem is that the interactive readaloud cards are so big, they don't fit in my drawers or my binders. It's not a big deal, however, as I keep them in a box with a few of the other resources, such as the large letter-sound cards. I keep the interactive readalouds in order by week, so at the end of the week I put the ones I'm finished with in the back, and then the current week is always at the front. So there's no digging through anything for those, either. The other resources are stored neatly in boxes or crates and are also readily accessible. These little crayon boxes are perfect for those tiny word building cards! I could easily have added the photo cards and letter-sound cards to the unit binders, which may be a great suggestion if you use them frequently. Personally, I utilize a lot of the online resources for those things. However, it still only takes me a minute to find these in the event that I need them. I love having so many resources to use, as long as I don't have to waste hours every week trying to put it all together. This organizational system has been very helpful to me, and I hope it is to you, too! Do you have any tips for organizing Wonders? Let me know in the comments!
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Today, 4th grade starting working on their self portraits, inspired by the art of Tad Carpenter, and the fabulous art teacher Katie Allain. You can check out their art on their Instagram accounts, if you click on their names. He's the artist who designed the cover for the book, Wonder! Here's how we created ours! Materials: Sax 90lb paper Sax liquid watercolors Sharpie markers Pencils hair examples Day 1: Talk about the book and movie, Wonder. I plan on playing the audio book, and listening to it while they work. I demonstrated how to draw a simple outline of a face and a simple hairline, like the artist did. I then demonstrated how to trace/color with a Sharpie, and paint with liquid watercolors. I also put up different hair styles on the screen. I think individual copies at their tables would work better, btw :) Here's my fist 4th grade class, working on theirs today!
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My school district recently adopted McGraw-Hill Wonders as our new K-6 reading series. Previously, we were using a variety of series and resources to meet our students' needs. In my 8 years of teaching, this will be the first year I've had a reading curriculum that addresses {most of} our standards! If you've been reading my blog for awhile, you might know that using a basal to teach is not exactly my style, so this is a HUGE change for me. In an ideal world, I would use a reading workshop model to teach whole group mini-lessons with trade books and then differentiate with leveled readers in small groups. I am still planning on using a reading workshop model, but I will be integrating Wonders into the model. I hope to blog about Wonders throughout the year to share about the integration process. According to McGraw-Hill, Wonders is the first and only reading program designed specifically for the Common Core. This is a definite improvement over our previous series; however, this does not mean the curriculum is without flaws. My colleague, Amanda, and I spent A LOT of time this summer aligning Wonders to our 2nd grade CCSS and developing a scope and sequence for the year. Throughout this process, we discovered many things we loved about Wonders, as well as a few things we were not impressed with! I will start with the things we loved! :) 1) Literature: The stories in the literature anthology of Wonders are very good! I've worked with a lot of basals that had really dull stories, so I am excited that Wonders includes stories that are engaging and high-interest for my students. 2) Instruction Model: The 2nd grade curriculum of Wonders includes 2 textbooks. You use the Reading/Writing Workshop textbook to pre-teach the comprehension and vocabulary of the week, as well as model close reading. Then, you have students apply these skills to the weekly selection in the Literature Anthology. I really like the concept of being able to pre-teach skills and apply them to quality literature. 3) Multiple Selections: Both textbooks include multiple selections each week. The selections are a variety of genres to allow for multiple ways for students to practice their skills. Now, onto the main problem we are having with Wonders... scope and sequence! {a large problem, I might add!} Scope and Sequence: I emailed the folks at McGraw-Hill multiple times to see if they could provide a matrix that indicates which CCSS are being focused on each week. (Because my district uses standards based grading, it is important for us to see the scope and sequence of the standards we are teaching and assessing). The best McGraw-Hill could do was tell me to use the online Weekly Planner resource to pull up the weekly standards. So, I tried it. Unit 1, Week 1 lists 44 standards for the WEEK (12 of which don't pertain to 2nd grade). Clearly, that's not going to work for us! Like usual, I decided to create my own resource to meet my needs. My friend and colleague, Mary, created a template to use to map out Wonders for 4th grade. Using the template, I worked with my friend, Amanda, to create a scope and sequence that showed the CCSS that were truly being focused on each week. You can download the FREE checklist by clicking on the image below. {Full Disclosure: We worked on this at 2 AM on some nights, so I make no promises that it's 100% accurate, but it's a start!} Throughout the year, I will be creating additional Wonders resources to meet our needs. One of the first things I have already created is a spelling unit! Second Grade Wonders includes weekly spelling words based on a pattern. Although the words are provided by Wonders, I found that the curriculum was lacking some necessary components such as: 1) Organized lists to send home to parents 2) Word cards for sorting by pattern (Wonders does provide word cards in their online resources, but they do not include sorting headers and their cards are huge... which wastes too much paper in my opinion!) 3) Most importantly, a guide on how to assess students' spelling! Because my team is going to be utilizing Wonders for spelling this year, I decided to create a comprehensive unit for us to use. So far, I have Unit 1: Weeks 1-5 completed and posted on TPT. I am currently working on Units 2-6 and will create a bundle if there is enough interest. Here is what my unit includes: {Click on the image above to check out the unit} {Download the preview file for a FREE sample of Unit 1: Week 1} Click on the images below to see a full size image. These can also be downloaded in the preview file. {How I plan on teaching spelling} {The weekly spelling patterns and the words that are on each test} {Word list to send home with students... includes lines for handwriting practice!} {Word cards and headers for sorting} I have my students cut, sort, and glue the word cards on notebook paper. I've included a few blank cards to help students think of additional words that follow the pattern. {Description of the spelling test} {Example of a spelling test} Phew! This was a long post! Hooray for you if you made it to the end! Please comment below if you are using 2nd Grade Wonders this year. I would love to connect and collaborate with you!
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