Awesome Website

I wanted to share a website that a colleague shared with me. It is not related to RtI directly but has great ideas for all different types of classroom management issues. I LOVE IT! I have having kind of a rough year and their are wonderful ideas on it. The site is http://www.smartclassroommanagement.com/. I read the book Dream Class by Michael Linsin, the creator of this website. It was a great book!

Kindergarten Update

Our kindergarten intervention groups have been making a lot of progress. The progress monitoring we have been doing is showing great gains in letter identification. Beginning with 24 students who recognized less than 15 letters, we now only have two students in this grouping, one of them being an ESL student from Saudi Arabia that just moved to our school two weeks ago and speaks ZERO English.

We have changed our groups to the following:

Most Intensive Group: 24 students

*4 classroom teachers working with 4-5 students each on identifying all 26 letters and sounds
*1 classroom aide working with 2 struggling students on a few letters at a time..DRILL!
*1 classroom aide working on rhyming with 6 students

Next Group - Still Intensive
*New Reading Interventionist working with 6 students using McGraw-Hill Triumphs reading program.

Next Group - Pretty Intensive Still (though getting soooo much better)
*1 Title 1 Teacher and 1 aide working with 10 students on beginning, middle and ending sounds.

Next Group - Strategic
*1 Title 1 teacher and 2 aides working with 16 students on sounding out cvc words.

Next Group - Enrichment
*1 Title 1 teacher and 1 aide working with 18 students blending words and beginning sentence writing.

Next Group - Enrichment
*1 Title 1 teacher and 1 aide working with 27 (too many) students on writing skills.

Interventionist Update

Things are going really great with our new Reading Interventionist!  She has been working with our students for about two weeks now and is doing a wonderful job.  She is working with some of the students who are currently in our Reading Recovery program, but may not discontinue when the program is complete.  We are hoping that she will give them a little bit more practice and possibly some new skills to use in order to make it over the hump to discontinue.  She is also working with some students after school each night on reading and math skills.  The students seem to enjoy this small group time with her and are already showing some improvement in their skills.

International Reading Association

This sight has lots of wonderful information for teachers.  It is a great resource for professional development opportunities as well as grant opportunities.  Teachers can find lesson plans and information on RtI.  We have found some great reading lists here, too!

Reading Rockets Website

Reading Rockets is a great website for anyone wanting to help students become better readers and thinkers.  It contains a lot of information for parents, teachers, principals, and even librarians.   A list of books and authors allows you to find new and interesting books to keep students interested in reading.  You can also find a section that focuses on struggling readers.  Check out this website if you haven't already and see what great information is available to you!