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Home : 2004 : November : 25

Materials
By Teach3rd

First of all, were you in on the writing of the grant? The grant will have specifics that you will need to follow. I am not sure exactly how specific (like X amount will go for books, etc.) I do know that we each had $1000
to spend. We were so excited about that. Then someone above our LL said we HAD to use the $1000 for books only to build our classroom libraries.
Our Cadre' has to come for X amount of hours for Prof. Dev. and we also have to put in 90 MORE hours after that. We go to the Reading Academy in the summer as well. This is our first full year for Reading First. We got the grant in

the last part of last year.

Besides books for the kiddos, we each got a huge rolling easel (that also stores BIG books and trays at the bottom to store manipulatives). She also bought us each copies of teacher resource books for activites as well as books for understanding fluency, vocabulary, etc. etc. We did get some books that were quite helpful for our classrooms. We got the Fluency and Vocabulary programs from the Elements of Reading series. We got a Word Wall kit. She also bought us vocabulary games, reading rods, pointers for read the room, pocket charts, etc.

We also have to have Literacy Centers. I have always done centers in one way or another but not just strictly literacy ones. Some teachers freaked out when they were told to do centers. We were told by our Cadre' that we should ease into them if we haven't done them before. Maybe start with the Word Wall and Listening Centers. Maybe a Book Nook with whisper phones. Those are easy. The following Centers are ones that I have in my classroom right now. I don't use ALL of them at once but mix them up week to week.

Listening Center
Word Wall
Book Nook
Puppet Theatre
Read&Write The Room
Poetry Center
BIG Books
Writing Center
Guided Reading (they meet with me)
Leap Track

I hope to add more soon.

Teachers just need to know that they can't just say "Here are the Centers. Go!" The teacher MUST model the centers, way to use the center, behavior in the center, etc. before they let the students use the center. I do a lot of role playing at the beginning of school to show them how and how not to use the center. Every time I introduce a new center, I go through all that again! The kids really do become absorbed in the centers and it is their favorite time of day!

Our Reading Block is 90 min. 45 min. Whole Group and 45 min. Centers. I have an aide during my Center Time. I also do Poetry outside of that time block as well as interventions. My intensive readers go with someone from our intervention team for 45 min. I work with the strategic readers and the benchmark readers read on their own.

I use Fluency from the Elements of Reading series some days in my Guided Reading time and skills on the other days. I meet with my lowest readers every day, and the others a few to just one day for my better readers.

I will be happy to elaborate on anything I have written so far. If you have any more questions, just post and I will try to find out the answer for you.

GOOD LUCK!