Okay, not ease per say, but with a relatively stress-free mindset compared to the rest of my day.
I knew where to go for my weekly fluency passages (reading A-Z), I had a list of must do's to choose from based on what standards we were working on in whole group and what grade level assessment data revealed. I've changed up our "word work" a few times, but am now using this great resource:
Based on my notes from our daily fluency practice (and my RCBM progress monitoring), I select what focus skill we'll be using for the week. So far we've done irregular past tense verbs, silent consonants and soft & hard c. Next week we're looking at stressed and unstressed syllables.
Over the past several years, I've meticulously created teacher guides for my novels. Through the amazing generosity of supporters on donorschoose, awesome sales on Scholastic, thorough searching at second hand bookstores, Amazon's fast shipping and shamelessly using my teacher discount at both Borders and Barnes and Noble, I have established a decent classroom library, filled with multiple copies of some great books. I try to have at least six of each, so I can use these novels with a small group.
However, with twelve small groups, I've arrived at the day I've dreaded.
Some of my groups are ready to read novels I haven't had the time to meticulously prepare...which means I have extra homework!
Granted, reading is by no means a chore. I love reading!
However, while I'm reading the novel my students are, I'm carefully taking down vocabulary words, writing comprehension questions (with answers so I don't forget), picking out specific parts for a close read, brainstorming homework questions and more. It takes a long time for me to prep a teacher guide so that I feel confident doing the novel with a small group. I'm not one of those teachers that can just sit down and read the book with them, I want to be ahead of them so I know if the answers they're giving are correct.
Last week not one, but three of my groups finished their novels and selected new ones that I haven't read yet. So this weekend's homework is reading at least the first part of these books:
"Who Could That Be at This Hour?" (the first of 4 novels in Lemony Snicket's All the Wrong Questions series, a quasi-prequel to the Series of Unfortunate Events)
The Lost Hero by Rick Riordian. Darn, more adventures at Camp Half-Blood!
They selected this book because they noticed the Newbery Award on the cover and concluded it must be a good novel. How can you argue with that logic?
I figure I won't finish all of them by Monday, but I can at least get part way through and stay a few chapters ahead of them!
(On the bright side, novel guides for these three books will be available within the coming month on my TpT site!).
On that note, I say goodbye for the weekend and am off to read!
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