A lovely coworker of mine told me this morning Target had many of their school supplies on clearance. Um, clearance is my middle name. Clearance is my calling. Of course I had to go. Plus, I needed some more notebooks for Daily 5 as well as Word Work.
And guess what? 70% off, that's what. There was a clearance section tucked back behind the seasonal costumes and it was FILLED with notebooks. I got a notebook for each of my students to use for note-taking, as well as a composition book for each student to use for Words Their Way word study. They came out to $.22 each! That's $11 for 50 notebooks. That is what I call a mega steal.
I was especially excited because we are starting word study tomorrow. We will be doing practice sorts for the rest of the week using picture sorts as examples. I really wanted to have the notebooks for the first day, but didn't want to spend $.50/each (the cheapest I could find until today).
Next week we will be getting full swing into word study. I already gave the spelling assessment and split my kiddos into groups. I am starting with three groups this year, a number I've found to me the most manageable. Last year I had a hard time keeping all of my materials organized, so this year I am trying an idea I heard from a co-teacher.
First, I got a large binder (mine is 3"). Then, I bought page protectors from staples. I am going to copy the lessons for my group by color (this helps especially for kiddos who are prone to losing their word sorts). I will put the copies of each word sort into the page protectors. The lessons will get copied and put into the binder before the sorts. This way I have easy access to the lessons as well as word sort copies. I usually make extra of each word sort just in case. A bonus of doing it this way is I know exactly where to find copies of old sorts as I will be keeping the extras in the page protectors.
I will keep all of the sorts and lesson in the binder so I have everything at my fingertips for all of my groups.
One thing I did last year that I will repeat is using baggies for keeping word sorts safe in desks. I took snack sized baggies and stapled them into the front cover of their notebooks. I did this by opening the baggie and stapling only one side. This way they can open their baggie all the way.
Below is the schedule I am planning to use so my groups know what the expectation is for them each day. We run on a six-day cycle, which is reflected in the schedule. I will work on a rotating schedule so that I will only be meeting with one group a day (every other day, in fact) during one of our daily 5 blocks. I split up the activities over the six days so they would have a variety of activities over the week.
The Word Rock game is from Ladybug's Teacher Files. I will also be using her Word Pattern Playlist for students to record new words that fit their pattern. The Value Words game is from Go Fourth! With Mrs. Owens. For cursive practice, I bought small whiteboards from the dollar section at Target and skinny white board markers. I put them into a basket so my students can practice writing their word study words in cursive (they just love it SO much!). For word stamps, I bought some letter stamps from the Lakeshore Learning. My kiddos can stamp their words into their word study notebook. I bought some different colored stamp pads so they could even make the words rainbow.
I am hoping for a smooth start to our word study journey this year, but you know what they say about the best laid plans. I'm curious as to how other people organize and set up their word study.
What works for you?
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