Weekly Theme: I introduce this on Mondays during our morning meeting and followed through with it during my theme time 2-3 times a week.
Spelling: Each week I give my kids a spelling pretest test on Fridays after our normal test. I take the weekend to look over their pretest and decide if they need 8 words, all 10 or 12. If they needed 12 I would look for words that fit Treasures pattern but added another preciously taught element like sh diagraph or something. For Mondays mini lesson I would intro the pattern and give out their spelling packets. In their spelling packet I would have pages from Rachelle from What the Teacher Wants packet and pages from Abby's (The Inspired Apple) Word Work Packets. My kids knew they had to do 2 pages from the packet each day and then could do whatever they wanted from our Work on Words bins (stamps, wiki stix, magnets, etc). We would also read the decodable and highlight the spelling pattern in the words we found. On Tuesdays my mini lesson was a sorting the words together, Wednesday we tried to think of other words that would fit the pattern and use the spelling words in sentences. Thursdays we would play Michelle's (Fabulous in First) Sight Words I have Who Has and spelling Sparkle.
Weekly Comprehension Strategy, Skills and Stories: On Mondays Tuesdays I would use the weekly big book and intro the weekly skill. I would also place the main weekly story in my listening story with a graphic organizer that went with the weekly skill. I mostly used Michelle's reading response forms for this. Tuesdays I would use the Oral Vocabulary Cards (I love these) and do a think aloud of with the weekly skill. Wednesdays I would use any picture book of my choice and do an interactive think aloud with the weekly comprehension strategy and skill. Thursdays we would use another picture book and the kids would answer my comprehension questions.
Grammar: This is an area I had more trouble with, some of the concepts Treasures choses to spend a week on I don't agree with. What I ended up doing was making nouns, verbs and adjectives into units. I used Reagan's (Tunstalls Teaching Tidbits) parts of speech units, Made for First Grades sentence unit and a couple others. I would still discuss the weekly topic Treasures suggested just not in overkill. We did a lot of made libs and Brain Pop Jr as well. I would sometimes set up sorts or other type centers for the kids to do during work on writing.
Leveled Readers: At the beginning of the year I took them out of the unit approaching, on level and beyond bins and leveled them. I used them for my guided reading groups and ran true guided reading lessons (following Jan Richarson's lesson plan format) not Treasures small group lessons. My kids typically used two leveled readers a week. This was my favorite time!
Disclaimers--First I really dislike Treasures because of all the workbooks they have and how much whole group instruction they suggest. I don't think their weekly assessment is a fair or accurate way to gauge a child's reading and didn't use them last year. We did not order the grammar workbook last year so that was one less workbook to fit in. Finally I was not required to use every page in the Practice O workbook, and won't be using it all next year.
Next year I am hoping and planning to do Reading Workshop. I plan on using Treasures big books, oral vocabulary cards and possibly the weekly story in a listening story type center. I will be using Words Their Way instead of Treasures spelling list. I'm still figuring things out but will post once I have a better idea of my plan.
I hope this post is helpful to someone, feel free to ask any questions you may have.
Hi! Found you blog on a couple linkies. I use Daily 5 and Treasures too! I agree with you and dislike Treasures, but we were told to teach it with fidelity.
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