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The Brown Bag Teacher

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Reading Street in 1st Grade

A basal?! You use a basal?!? This is one of the most common questions/emails I receive through blogging, and I have to admit it is something I was very nervous about when moving schools. I never student-taught in a classroom with a basal, and when teaching 5th grade I solely relied on the Common Core. There were plenty of times when I *wished* I had something to guide me, but I flew solo. 

Moving schools/districts/grades over the summer, I still loosely say “I use a basal.” In reality, our administration trusts us [teachers] and our ability to do what is best for students. In 1st grade, we use Reading Street (2013) as our scope and sequence (which has worked out very well). We do use the phonics, must-know words, spelling words, and some of the comprehension from the program but pull from other resources for writing, guided reading, and our Daily 5/small-group times.

I teach in a fairly affluent school, and our students are typically pretty high. With our student population there is a significant portion of Reading Street that does not work for us, as it’s not challenging enough. Thankfully, we are blessed with the freedom to supplement. We completely skip the ‘R’ Unit at the beginning of the year, and we only pull the decodable readers for our lowest groups and ELLs (see them in the picture below). Right now, 2 of my 4 reading groups routinely use RS in small groups (my lowest group uses the yellow material – on grade level and my on-grade level group uses the blue material). In the other groups, I pull chapter books and nonfiction passages.
We are blessed with all of the Reading Street materials to pull from, and our materials take an entire cabinet, plus additional storage for the Readers and Writers Notebooks (which we rarely pull from because it’s a book of 300 worksheets that lack rigor or interest. Once a week, I do try to pull the phonics practice page for morning work.) The bottom pull-out drawers hold our class-sets of basal readers: units R – 5…note I only pull 7 copies of each book each unit, as our reading block is structured in small groups and I would NEVER need 25 copies of the basal.
At the beginning of the year I pre-sorted our Leveled Readers by week putting the green, yellow, and blue readers together with a rubber band. Keeping all 3 books together makes them easy to grab and plan with. Over the summer, I want to use binder clips writing the Guided Reading Levels of each book on the binder clips.

We’re also blessed with the Science Leveled Readers which are THE best part of Reading Street. I don’t use them in conjunction with our reading program, but pull from it during Reading RtI. The texts are ridiculously interesting, packed full of nonfiction text features, and WAY more rigorous than their ‘reading’ leveled readers. I LOVE THESE TEXTS. To store these treasures I binder clip each set of 6 together, and tri-fold the coordinating graphic organizer, placing it inside the book. That way when I grab for the book next, I’ll have the organizer ready without having to reprint it. Boom.

Using RS as a scope and sequence, our class Focus Wall highlights our learning targets for the week. It’s not fancy, but it works (over the summer I have big plans to revamp this into a hands-on space that students can take ownership in). Our Focus Wall includes our comprehension, phonics, fluency, writing, and high-frequency words for the week. At the top of the board, I include the story sequence cards for the week. The string and clips are for displaying student work!

 So, our schools has these Reading Street resources, and I use parts of them through Daily 5 rounds and guided reading. I do mentor-text mini-lessons whole group for 5-7 minutes in between Daily 5 rounds, so I do not touch the whole-group parts of Reading Street. (insert rant about the ineffectiveness of whole-group instruction) I do the bulk (85%) of my instruction in small groups through Guided Reading.  My top 2 tips for making RS easy to work with in small groups – (1) set out the materials before groups begin, so as soon as students arrive they can begin working. (2) If you are going to use the basal (see below) go ahead and open the book to the right page. That way, you can just pass out the books when your ready and there is no need to waste 1.5 minutes of a 15 minute oration (i.e. 10% of your time) finding Pg. 135.

I do have my students to use a Leveled Reader as a warm-up or a phonics hunt. The problem with the leveled readers is even within the colors (green – below level, yellow – on level, blue – above level) the texts jump reading levels from week-to-week. One week a text will be a Level J, the next week it will be a Level G, and the following week a text will be a Level I. ALLOVERTHEPLACE. Our primary grades are blessed to have access to Reading A-Z, so we can pull just-right reading materials for our groups. 

This does mean that many times sometimes my groups do not read the basal story for the week as it is not appropriate for the group (i.e. it’s a GRL J and they are reading on a G). But when I can, I do try to pull the story for at least one day. To read more about how I structure our guided reading time, click here.

While students are not with me in Guided Reading, they make their Daily 5 choices – word work, listening to reading, read to self, work on writing, and Lexia.

In Word Work, students pull their Word Ring to work on their phonics skills. I created the word rings using words suggested by Reading Street. The green words (approaching grade-level) are the must-know and intervention words for each week, the yellow words (on-grade level) are the phonic-skills words, and the blue words (above grade level) are the enrichment words. You can read about our Word Work routine here and how we differentiate our centers here.

Throughout our Daily 5 block, our friends are also on the look-out for our grammar or phonics skill for the week to write a spotted word on our Word Collector. It’s great to see our skills in action in REAL books, and helps me see student misconceptions about our skills. Read more about our Word Collector here.

 We also use the Reading Street big books provided for each unit. For each unit, there are 2 big books. One of the books is a contrived phonics-based book but the second is a high-quality, real piece of literature….which is AWESOME! I love exploding my friends to REAL authors/illustrators – Peter Reynolds, Mem Fox, etc.

We use these big books in Word Work and Read to Self at the end of each unit. Our team creates a scavenger hunt with each book highlighting grammar and comprehension skills we’ve been working  in the unit. It’s perfect practice applying the skills, and they are timeless reads every 1st grader should enjoy.

A final component of Reading Street I regularly use is each unit’s Grammar Jammer movie that’s found on Pearson Success Net. These are fabulous videos and songs that coordinate with our week’s grammar skill. From nouns to verbs to pronouns, we all love a little ditty to help us learn.

So, friends, this is what works for our 1st grade team from Reading Street. There are several parts we struggle using – fluency, writing, the weekly assessments, the unit assessments (ohmygoodness!), the focus on whole-group, and the stark difference in reading levels from week-to-week in texts. Thankfully, we can tweak and pull for these things. I am glad, though, to have a frame of reference – especially teaching 1st for the first time – and have a printed scope and sequence. 
Please tell me, how do you using Reading Street? Are there any treasures in the program that I need to learn about this summer? If so, I’d love to hear what’s working for you! 🙂

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Comments

  1. We also have RS and I struggle to find the balance between using it ("since the school board bought it, we should use it!") and doing centers. Like you, I love the scope and sequence guide. However, I HATE whole group reading of each story but don't want to waste my small group time with half my groups reading it when it isn't what's right for them. Those who need the reading exposure aren't paying attention and the others would read anything! Thank you for the ideas; I plan to use your guidelines to try some new things in anticipation for next year 🙂

    Reply

    • Preach, sister! I absolutely do not use the weekly story whole group. Just like you said, it doesn't work. I still try to pull as much as I can from the program, though, as our schools are paying crazy money for it! So glad to know there are other teachers still working to find the balance with me!

      Reply

  3. Our school also has the Reading Street program. I have the same struggles as others mentioned, trying to find the balance on what to use and what is beneficial. I use the Phonics and High Frequency words. I also use the convention skills listed, but supplement my own activities for all of these areas. I also struggle with the main selections because they are not on the correct level for many of the students, being either too difficult or too easy. What I have found, that my students enjoy, is using the Audio Text CDs and allowing the students to listen to the main selection and follow along in their book. They do this in small groups.
    Thank you for sharing your ideas. I am excited to try some of them.

    Reply

  4. Your organization is so simple but so smart!

    We had RS for a few years and then moved towards a balanced literacy approach of Reader's and Writer's Workshop, but I love the anthologies for partner reading, the scope and sequence, and the leveled readers are so valuable!

    Rachel
    thirdgradecupcakes.blogspot.com

    Reply

  5. Thanks for sharing! Love your ideas and how you make it work! My school used Reading Street too. I did a lot of picking and choosing what worked for me. Many similar things – guided reading, the partner reading and scavenger hunt. The thing that really helped my students get and keep the skills was a morning work set I developed to go along exactly with each week. I loved it, and the kids loved doing it, too. They did it first thing every morning. It's actually the first resource I posted on TpT because I knew how well it worked. If you're interested in looking at it or trying the free First Week set, here's the link to it the freebie. https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Morning-Work-1st-Grade-Common-Core-A-Daily-ELA-Math-Review-1240507. Within it you can find links to the unit sets and the entire year bundle if you find it helpful. I hope I don't sound like I'm just trying to promote myself here, because that is not my intent. I just know how helpful it was to me.

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  7. Where did you get the leveled words from? I see they say week 8 but not sure where you saw a leveled list. Do you take the words from the DI pages?

    Reply

    • Hello! I snag my BL set form 5 must-know words and 5 phonics-skill words. Then, my OL words are from their spelling list. The AL words are in the red/yellow pages in the back of each week. They are the enrichment list!

      Reply

  8. I love your website! I have searched through Pearsonsuccess.net for the Grammar Jammer videos/movies. Please tell me where I can find this part of the program.
    Thanks:)

    Reply

  9. Is there a list I can refer to create my own differentiated word list for BL, OL and AL? We also use reading street but I am puzzled where you are getting the weekly words from.

    Reply

    • Hello! I snag my BL set from 5 must-know words and 5 phonics-skill words. Then, my OL words are from their spelling list. The AL words are in the red/yellow pages in the back of each week. They are the enrichment list!

      Reply

  10. We are just starting Reading street and daily 5 all at once this year! (I'm a little overwhelmed)!! I am looking in the manual for the words you used and am having a hard time finding what words you used. The sections I have at the beginning of each week are "amazing words", "high frequency words", "phonics and spelling." Also, how many words do you put on each ring?

    Reply

    • Hi Stephanie! In order to access the videos, your school has to have a paid account with SF. If you do, ask your curriculum coordinator for a username and password. The videos are under the individual stories on Day 2 or Day 3! 🙂

      Reply

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