Study Baggies

At the beginning of the second marking period, I started sending home weekly Study Baggies.  Every Monday I send home a baggie with a slip of paper with five things students practice every night.  Then during Fun Friday centers, I meet with each student individually and quiz them on the five items.  I track whether or not they know all five and replace the items they got correct with the next five things they need to know from their progress monitoring form.

I have been so impressed with my students' progress!  They have been working through kindergarten reading benchmarks!!  Almost all of my students are 100% proficient on their uppercase and lowercase letters, letter sounds, and now we are working through our 47 sight words (reading and writing), and DIBELS (nonsense word fluency, and segmenting sounds).  A number of students have even moved onto the first grade sight words!!!

The students keep these baggies in their take home folders all week. It's easy for parents to access nightly for practice and it's easy for my aide and I to grab when we have an extra moment throughout the day to practice with students.  It's differentiated, targets the skills each student needs the most to be successful, and the goals are easily attainable so it promotes self confidence.

I am so excited about the success of this program, that I am definitely going to start much earlier next school year!!  I'm always looking for ways to make things even better, so if you have any ideas....please share!!!