Reading Toolkit- 'Ohana Night

Good morning world!

Today is a very exciting day!  My grade level is hosting our students' families after school for our literacy skills night.  We are calling it our "Reading Toolkit".  Basically the idea is for families to walk away with useful "tools" they can use at home over the summer for continuous practice.  Each teacher will lead a center/group to teach a literacy component.  There will be 6 centers:  Comprehension (thinking strategies), Comprehension (visual strategies- graphic organizers), Writing, Grammar/Conventions, Phonics/Word Work, and Positive Enforcement Strategies.

Front of Reader's Toolkit

 Back of reader's toolkit includes usernames and passwords for each website

Directions for parents to use at home.

Invitation for family night.

I will lead the Writing Workshop.  There are so many skills of writing that I want to cover, but there is a 10 minute window...  I decided to focus on the kinds of opportunities students have to write, ways to graph the amounts of time they write each day, stages of writing so students/parents can track improvement, as well as useful tips for writing.  Parents will start out by sitting in my center and getting a clipboard with paper/pencil.  I will use 2 minutes for families to work with their child on brainstorming different ways they can use writing in every day life.  This will be my segue to talk about the opportunities to write.  I will go on to introduce the graphs, stages of writing, and so on- parents can take home these sheets in their toolkit.

Another "tool" parents will learn about are our online resources.  We have 3 main sites that families can use at home:  ixl.com, pearsonsuccess.net (Reading Street Curriculum), and myON.com.  IXL is a math website that has interactive activities using the Common Core Standards for all grade levels with a self-monitoring system that is great for parents, students, and teachers to track growth.  myON is a website students can use to listen to reading.  There is a summer reading program through the site nationwide that gives away prizes to students who use it the most.  Last but definitely not least, is our Reading Street core reading program that allows students to practice vocabulary words with interactive activities, concept videos with amazing words, word work practice games, reading strategies, decodable readers, AND our reading stories student can follow along on the site.  It is probably the best thing EVER.  The kids love the songs that are on the site that sing about our concepts and amazing words.  There are even songs for grammar called "Grammar Jammer" that teaches students about grammar.  Can you tell I love this website???  Here are a few snapshots of what the student view looks like on the website.  Each student has their own username and password to access on their own from anywhere there's internet.

This is what students see when they log in.  They can explore by pressing "to do" or they can open the student edition of the basal reader and look page by page of the book's content.

This is what the "to do" tab looks like.  It has all the teacher's assignments that I added on my own homepage.

 If students wish to explore, they can do the interactive activities for ANY unit for ANY story.  It will have concept videos, decodable readers, the story for that week, vocabulary words, grammar activities, amazing words, and reading strategies.

 This is what the weekly outline looks like for every story.

A closer look at the vocabulary interactive activities.  It also has the definitions and a way to listen to each one.

This is a very user friendly site!  Love that my kids have a way to use the core curriculum at home and parents can also monitor what their child is learning in school.  Such an awesome resource!!!!!!!!!


At the end we are giving away 2 prizes/class that have 6 books from Scholastic, pencils, and journals.  We are also going to have awards for every student in the skill that they are strongest in.

I will share how the night goes later!












PS- I decided to change my signature.  Too fun!