Does anyone have trifolds for the new Journeys reading series? (stories are A Fine, Fine School, Pop's Bridge, What Do Illustrators Do? etc.) Our district just adopted it this year. I am trying to figure it all out. Anyway, it is a lot and trying to make additional materials just seems soooo overwhelming. I will if I have to. I would just like to connect with others using this series.
Last edited by Powerchic; 11-10-2010 at 01:33 PM..
We have the Journeys adoption this year as well. I am in charge of the reading plans for my team, and I am finding the task overwhelming. I am scrambling to find things to do with each story. We are reading Yonder Mountain next week, and incorporating Native Americans, especially the Cherokee into the lessons. We are also briefly touching on the Trail of Tears.
We have just started Journeys too. We had the old hm series, and I had some good activities and projects to go with that series. I am struggling with each story to come up with good ideas. I have done some voc. cards, and have found someone one here who has done some great voc. things. I am trying to do some too. When I get to school I will try to put some up here. It has been hard to stay on top of things. It has been hard to organize. I am even doing each lesson on a 6 day cycle. I can't imagine doing it in 5 days. What are your thoughts on the weekly tests? They seem very long. Have you use any of the other assessments? I haven't had time.
We are using the weekly tests for vocabulary and comprehension, but not the others that are provided. Our students do well on them.
I am glad I am not the only one struggling with this adoption.
I am using the weekly test. I use the comprehension, vocab, and grammar. To throw in more stress we use standards based grading so the comprehension test is a pain as I have to match each question to an indicator. I tried to make my own test using the test maker on think central, but the standards don't match as they only have the new national standards listed. I feel like I am drowning each week! I don't like a lot of the graphic organizers. I also have a handful of above level kids - the small books aren't high enough for them. A rep told me just to skip around but I feel like the small books at least complement the story and skill of the anthology. I was also told there is a three year learning curve (for teachers). YIKES!
Thanks- These are awesome!. I am so far behind (I will do Lesson 8 next week). I spent the first 20 something days of school doing daily 5 for dummies and cafe. I also worked on Fountas and Pinnell benchmark assessments. I keep wondering if I should just skip ahead and catch up to where I should be or just keep plugging away!
in the same boat and I really don't care for the stories. The children don't want to read because they said it is too hard, and boring. Honestly, I have bent over backawards so as not to let them know how I feel. I love all your trifolds etc.. We had the old series before w/ the units on fairy tales, disasters, and violent weather. Plus they changed us to the new Every Day Math and we are really chasing in circles. I just know all of your great ideas will really help and I will share this with our other 5 third grade teachers. TYVM
You have heard of mrnale.com, right!
Do you all do one story a week? I do a story in a six day cycle and even that is hard. When do you all do the writing? I feel like my kids never write a full writing piece. I usually on get the voc. grammar, story, story skill, writing and spelling done. I don't usually get to the fluency and phonics lessons.
Champ, so much for sharing! It will help. We are doing a story a week. We aren't going in the order the book has the stories. We are trying to do some sort of writing each week, usually something short and sweet each Friday. We do have a big writing project each six weeks.
I'm not too pleased with the whole group story choices. Last week was the illustrator story and it was very difficult to read aloud with all the speech balloons. The teachers in my school don't like the graphic organizers either. I have a hard time figuring out what exactly the answers are myself, and constantly have to check the teacher's edition.
What I'm most upset with is the writing. My district requires two portfolio pieces a month for writing, with a plan, draft, and final with rubric attached. With the five day cycle that we are using, it doesn't seem right that the program has the children begin writing only on day 4. At that rate, we'd never complete a writing piece. So the teachers in my grade are going back to our old method for writing.
people told us to just make sure we cover the skills!! I have trouble covering
enough of anything. Our district says we must follow the program, However at our training sessions they told us to skip the phonics.. You have a great idea using 6 days, but we are told we must cover the whole book. (It would be great if we had a week at the end of each unit to do the writing and individual readers for that week.) So that means we have only 6 extra weeks. We have already used 2 (the first week was only 3 days). Then we used 3 weeks to do the next 2 stories. We need to use 2 weeks in the Spring for review of skills. for OAT, and 3 more for Lit Circles. Christmas and Thanksgiving weeks are very short too. There is no way this is going to work unless we skip weeks and just teach the skills. We really need some help here! Any more ideas will be very appreciated.
That sounds really hard if you have to go by the week. I must admit some weeks I wish we went a a weekly schedule, but with short weeks etc. how would you ever get it done. We go by days, so we have day 1, day 2, etc. If we have a day off it does not matter, the we just go to the next day. It makes so much sense for specials and everything. Even if you didn't do a 6 day cycle at least your district should go by cycle days, so everything is fair. Before some kids repeatedly would miss the same special. How much time do you have for CA? We have about 90 min. to do everything including guided reading. I found this very hard to do. I would love to work for a publisher and tell them how to set up a good reading series! I still haven't found one.
Glad to hear others have the same issues. I'm also in charge of lesson planning for Reading and it has been unpleasant to say the least. I spend every weekend looking over the worksheets from all of the different sources and try to organize it in a week. I feel like all we do is worksheets to get the kids ready for the tests each week. There are no fun and engaging activities and the stories are not engaging literature. I am very disappointed with this adoption! Thank you all for your suggestions and support.
This is our first year using Journeys as well. I also struggle to get the writing in. I feel like the kids never get a complete story done!
One thing that I have found helpful is using the website smarttech.com for the grammar focus and phonics. The kids LOVE the smartboards and most of them are very well done. All you have to do is click on the educational section and type in your focus area.
Hi Champ this is the first I have heard of these trilfods. My what a lot of work. They are awesome! My question is......What is this series they are using. Is this similar to the old Basal readers, or a district program chosen for your school. As always learning something new every day. Just not seeing questions placed on the page in this format would eliminate some of the pressure for 3rd grade students Thanks so much. I am not able upload documents, but I would like to chat back and forth on this idea if possible. For example I have no set books to use, curriculum tells what but students choose "just right books with teacher assistance then read to self Daily 5/Cafe MP is not open to me yet (I think) but perhaps we could leave it as a new thread. If these are chapter books?? I plan to buy books for my class next week. If the students enjoy them i would pick a few copies. I'll just let DH drop me off with my chapters card from my Mom
Last edited by hapteacher; 09-11-2011 at 02:53 AM..
Reason: typos/addition thoughts
Hi Becklee, if I were to have a infocus machine witrh a mouse hooked to computerr would the students be able to work on this site??? The Joys of teaching in rural areas. (No smartboard) I am on the list to get one, but not looking good for this year. . . and this is the third year in a row.
I have been in the school system for many years, first as a teacher assistant, then return to school to finish BEd degree. Now, I truly love teaching and am a bit of an OCC on perfection but: sometimes you just skip a few lessons and combine the outcomes, using only one story. Could also then say if time allows, we use this for review. I know that elementary teachers seem to be a bit too worried about perfection. I have four full units in science that last unit is soil. I go though this unit and choose that main outcomes and include those in with first uinit on plants. Then in June when the heat is driving me and the kids crazy we do a smaller unit with more discovery learng activites. Most all children learned more by working at a grade three level. The Keeners or higher level learners take on all the soil experiements etc as enrichment for them and they present to the class.
Perhaps you and I could take on the publishers together. (I just can't seem to find books that at least a few suggestions for IEP and they seem to forget that grade three students come in a wide range of abilities. sorry for typos
Good morning I was wondering if you can send me all you have for journeys?
Right now, we are using as a "resource" but will be moving towards full swing soon
Want to have a jump start
Thanks
Champ thanks for the dominoes. I really like that idea so my kids can play them in working with words. Do you have anymore sets of dominoes for the beginning stories?
I work for a charter school and we just adopted Texas Journeys this year. We basically got the student books and the teacher books and nothing else. I downloaded the 10-15 trifolds that are on here and love them! How can I get the rest? Does anyone have them? Please Help!
These are great! Does anyone happen to have lessons 6-8? We just got this program this year and like most of you were given very little to go on. I am also having trouble finding vocabulary definitions for the lessons? Does anyone know if there is a site that has them done by lesson?
Do you have any more of these word study documents? I love them, my students enjoy them as well. Our school is a pilot school this year in our county to the Journeys series, so i have been working hard to come up with a lot of great things for the stories, and have found these to be great.
Thanks so much for sharing
Hi Everyone. My district recently adopted the 2014 Journey's Reading Series. We r eceived a half day of training on the last day of school, so I was hoping someone could share with me how they implement a week in their classroom. We have been rolling around ideas to begin the program next week, but are hoping to develop a solid weekly routine. The Reader's Notebook appears to be spelling, phonics, writing and grammar review. It doesn't appear to contain any of the comprehension/reading target skills. If anyone can share what weekly routine works for them, I would be forever grateful.
I've tried doing the test online. It went very well. I just do the open ended response on paper and adjust the score. I also do vocabulary and comprehension for one grade. I give the grammar as its own quiz.
This is new for us this year. We have a 30-35 minute writing block daily separate from the ELA block of 90 minutes. Seems to be working for us. We have stopped doing the series writing lessons and are now focusing on genre more specific for state testing.
11-09-2010, 09:53 PM
Just not seeing questions placed on the page in this format would eliminate some of the pressure for 3rd grade students Thanks so much. I am not able upload documents, but I would like to chat back and forth on this idea if possible. For example I have no set books to use, curriculum tells what but students choose "just right books with teacher assistance then read to self Daily 5/Cafe MP is not open to me yet (I think) but perhaps we could leave it as a new thread. If these are chapter books?? I plan to buy books for my class next week. If the students enjoy them i would pick a few copies. I'll just let DH drop me off with my chapters card from my Mom
