Foundational Skills in the Making!

Lights, Camera, ACTION….Oil that is ACTION 100 that is!  No, No, No, we aren’t the Beverly Hillbillies even though that theme song is going through our head right now.  But we are three teachers that are in love with our new response to intervention.  Have you heard of 100 Book Challenge or Action 100? The framework was built around The Common Core Standards, so yes; our kids have to know this great stuff.  The American Reading Company http://www.americanreading.com/about-us/our-mission/ is one of the best shifts our districts have made.  It allows our students to gain confidence in reading and become proficient readers.  It holds all teachers accountable for teaching the foundational skills students need to master in order to move on to the next level.  It involves the home.  Students have to read at home and if they don’t……they won’t be on school pace.  With all the school wide celebrations, kids want to be on pace.  YES, we love this part!  American Reading Core also provides parents with everything students need to be successful.  BOOKS, BOOKS, and more BOOKS!  Students are choosing and taking home multiple copies of books at their own reading level. 

Can you tell we are strong believers of this reading program?  However, back in September when we were all busy getting our classrooms put together we were always thinking one step ahead and mastering one step behind.  ALL three of us like things organized and we want to know what we are doing and where we are going.  However, the training for Action 100 begins slow so you are able to understand each piece well.  Since that isn’t part of any of our DNA, we dove headfirst into a sea of knowledge that we must admit, we soon felt like we were sinking.  But “together” we supported each other (filled up our inboxes each night) and began piecing things together and we started to see the great success from our students to the point where we could finally breathe.   Yes, that song from Faith Hill just popped into our head.  But it is true! 

It started with a vision of how we wanted our student conferencing to look and how Guided Reading would change as we know it.  We wouldn’t be having students all sitting around our table, reading the same book, discussing the same question.  WEIRD, I know…but we would be pulling kids to focus on key foundational skills and comprehension skills that they must master if they want to move through the color levels.  After deciding that we wanted to have supplemental assessments that fit hand in hand with this we began our collaboration.  Many times we had a brain freeze that hurt just as bad from learning as eating ice cream really really fast!   It was collaborating ideas back and forth amongst us that made our minds at ease.  When we could finally say, assessments check, we moved on to creating list of words we wanted our students to master.  This led directly into games and fun activities that would help us in our classroom to teach the skills each child would need to move on to the next color level. 

That leads us on to….drum roll please………our first complete bundle!  It has everything to make your life manageable in the classroom.  It has supplemental assessments, activities, games, and organizers that help you stay focused during student conferencing.  We are now sailing….not sinking!  We want to give you a sneak peak of what the rave/ hype is all about.  Take a look and head over to a TPT store to help make your life simpler and keep checking back for more bundles!

 

 Click on the image below to check out this fabulous bundle!

 

1G Supplemental Bundle