Welcome to my blog......

Hello ....  is anybody reading out there???  Well if you happen to find this little blog of mine, welcome.  I have been wanting to start this new blog for quite some time now.  Life had other plans though.  My kids seem to keep me very busy.  I feel like I finally have my head above water this year now.

We are out on Fall Break.  This basically means a 4-day weekend for me.  (Smiling)

I work with 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders.  I mainly work on reading.  I have discovered that if children are low in reading and math, usually reading is the problem in math.

Today I want to share with you what I have been doing with my 2nd graders so far this year.

I get my students for 50 minutes a day.  We call this time our "Power Hour".  During Power Hour the kids with IEPs are pulled for interventions with the Special Education teachers, intervention kids go to interventions, gifted kids go to the gifted teacher, and the remaining students receive enrichment instruction with the classroom teacher.  I have 2 groups of each grade 2-4.  

All of my students work on Raz-Kids except for a few.  If you have never heard of Raz-Kids, you need to check it out.  My kids love it, and they are all showing improvement in their fluency.  

While the kids are working on the computers with my assistant, I pull small groups to my table.  My assistant pulls each kid to work on sight word flashcards during this time also.  

At my table, I have been working on phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary.  I do this in several ways.

I bought this book from Carson Delosa.  You can see it here.  This is an ebook that I downloaded and printed out.  I have been doing it a little different than the way the book says to do it.  We use magnetic letters on cookie sheets.  You can look inside the book on the previous link to see a sample lesson.  I LOVE this book.  My 2nd graders are all  lacking in phonemic awareness and phonics.  This book is a great way to get them to really think about manipulating the letters and make words.  

Next, we work on a poem of the week.  I get my poems from this book.

This book of poems is wonderful.  With every poem you get an activity for phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary.   We only spend about 5-7 minutes on the poem each day.  

After working on the poem of the work, we read a weekly fluency passage.  I have been using this product from Common Core and So Much More.  

Next we work on a comprehension passage each day.  I have two books that I like to use for this.  

click on the book for link

click on book for link

I have both of these books for grades 2-4, and I use them with all of my students.  

Hope you have enjoyed a peek at what has been happening in my room with my 2nd graders.  I will share more on my third graders next week.  

I will also start getting six of my second graders for an extra hour during their reading instruction time to work on reading skills for dyslexic students.  I can't wait to share with you what I am doing with my dyslexic kids.  It is so exciting to see kids go from hating to read to loving to read.  That is why I love my job.

What do you do for interventions????  I love to get new ideas!