Most of what I am posting today goes with our Scott Foresman Story, Ruby in Her Own Time. Many of you can use it. This story is about changes in our student's lives. I am also going to make a timeline to view changes as they age. I will post the rest of the unit soon.
Here is the book:
I am not a huge fan of Scott Foresman so I make a ton of stuff to supplement. I pretty much teach the "skill of the week", but do it my way and not what is in the manual. This is my first year teaching this series, and I am already bored with it. The students do not like the stories. Thank goodness for my shopping addiction!!! I have a wealth of good literature and BIG BOOKS!!!! Love Ebay for some BIG BOOKS cheap!!!! I'd love to hear anyone else who uses SF and what they do with the series. I know Waltke's web (not a big fan) and a few others. Anything different????
I think it is up to me and Mrs. Arnold to Fancy up Scott Foresman for all of us EXCELLENT, STELLAR, SUPERSTAR TEACHERS!!!!!
I'm bored with Scott Foresman too - and this is our first year also. The K stories are not great AT ALL!
ReplyDeleteWell ladies, I've been in SF for four years now. The first year, we had to be married to the manual. Trust me, after that first year, we divorced!! For the first 2 years, I supplemented and tried to spice things up. Then, Enter SMARTBOARD. Now, I teach the skills, but I have built all of my lessons for teaching on the Smartboard. It has been a MAJOR change for both myself and the students. They absolutely LOVE the multimedia enrichment and activities! I was not a fan of this series when we were purchasing... and I agree that the stories are "blah"!
ReplyDeleteWe use SF as well and I am bored with it too! In K we read the story, sing the songs, and teach the skill. My teammate makes a SmartBoard activity to hit the target skill but throws in a wealth of other fun activities to work on phonics and grammer. She share that with the rest of us and its a LIFE SAVER!
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting these great SF supplements! I might be using them next year if I loop up!
mykinderlife.blogspot.com
Amen Mrs. Walsky!!
ReplyDeleteI loathe SF. I make sure to cover the Bullseye skills...but I do it my way. For example, the week when the comprehension skill was compare and contrast, that's when I did the Three Little Pigs lit study. The students still read the story in SF, but kept their book inside their book boxes to read during Read to Self and Read to Someone. The workbook pages make great HW pages or sometimes I'll use the sight word pages for the weekly test. I have to do something to keep it interesting. Thanks for the plug Mrs. Walsky:)
Yolanda
ocenasoffirstgradefun.blogspot.com
I don't use SF. Currently the Gen Ed classes are using Houghton Mifflin. I used it for a coupl of years when I taught First grade. That was before I switched to ELL. I am afraid though because it's almost time for my district to shop for a new seris and all I've heard about SF is that teachers don't like it. Yikes. I'll keep my fingers crossed that we don't purchase it.
ReplyDeleteMs. M
www.msk1ell.blogspot.com
ugh...SF... this is our 3rd year in it... and we still have to be married to it..well the meat of it anyway. I make my own centers and try to come up with fun sightword games and cute ways to implement the building background. I will touch on the target skills using the SF story and then reinforce them during our unit in the afternoon. I also make lots of charts and the Ss like to participate in making them GREAT becuase after each unit draw sticks to see who gets to take home what. So far the t rex and the long neck dino (The Big Circle) have been the best! I just started blogging and hope to post a LOT of ways to spice SF up.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all of your great ideas!
Laura
www.laurasopenhouse.blogspot.com
I have to say that at first I wasn't a big fan of reading programs until our school district adopted the Imagine It! (SRA) program a few years ago and I have to say that I absolutely LOVE LOVE this program! It is not boring at all and you cover a lot of skills within reasonable pacing! I'm so glad we use this program! It is very effective and my kids and I do not get bored easily!
ReplyDeleteOf course with any basal I feel like we still have to supplement.
Have you checked out Cherry Carl's website? She has lots of supplemental activities. A lot of them are worksheets, but I like including them in our word work station for extra practice of High Frequency Words, etc.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.littlebooklane.com/SF1.htm
Or Reading Street Sound City has lots of variations of the R-S worksheets, re-vamped tests, etc.
http://www.soundcityreading.com/
Yeah, I have been on those. I like soundcityreading. I find Carls Corner to have a lot of mistakes, and just doesn't interest the kids. Some things are great though. I have used a lot of things from her site. She is very generous to give us so many freebies. I wish these textbook companies would hire real teachers to make their programs! I keep thinking "If it was so fab, wouldn't everyone be using it? Wouldn't test scores be growing....not falling. We are told to use it by the book, but we know if we did, the students would never make it." Sorry, went off on a tangent. :) We just need to do the best for these kids and prescribe them their specific education plan. We don't question doctors for prescribing medicine....Let me prescribe the correct "medicine" for my students. Whooo Hooo. I think I am done!
ReplyDelete