Redfly Reading Curriculum
Several years ago, when I first began teaching in a public school setting, I was hired as a Title I Bilingual Aid. My principal wanted to hire me as a teacher, but they had no openings at the time. That didn't matter to me, though, I was happy to be offered any position.
Let me back up a little bit more... Before we moved to Texas, my husband and I were missionaries, helping churches start ministries to reach their hispanic communities. We traveled all around the United States, teaching churches, and on several occasions living in their communities for months at a time helping them get their ministries started.
In order to give our kiddos a good education, despite all our moving, I decided to homeschool them. However, about 5 years into our ministry, my husband suffered Carbon Monoxide poisoning that caused brain and nerve damage. After trying many, many different treatments, we were informed that the damage was irreversible and it was time for us to consider applying for disability.
Jumping forward several years, we find ourselves living in Forney, Texas (much warmer than Ohio-Yay!), my parents living in our same neighborhood, my kiddos happy in our neighborhood elementary school, my hubby now stabilized enough where I can now go back to work, and me applying for a teaching position in our same school district after being out of the education world for about 14 years. I was nervous, but I knew God would provide. So, when I was offered the position of a Title I Bilingual Aid, with the promise of a teaching position as soon as it opened, I jumped at the chance.
Not three weeks later, I was informed the 6th grade class was going to need a 3rd teacher. Students were moving into the neighborhood and they had received approval to hire another teacher for ELAR, and they wanted me! I was excited, but boy was I in for a big surprise! When homeschooling my kids I had chosen curriculum knowing that the companies I loved and trusted had invested a lot of time planning and making sure that everything in their curriculum was aligned. Not only were they aligned to each grades' standards, but also to kids' cognitive abilities. I quickly learned that public schools now days do not have those kind of resources. Instead, I was given a set of TEKS- what in the world is that?!- and told I needed to teach them. I looked around the room and found a set of basals- that later I found out no one used- and tried to decide what to do. I tell you what, by the end of that school year I definitely knew what TEKS were and could probably quote them to you. I had never worked so hard creating materials and trying to make sure my students learned what they needed to in order to be prepared for the next grade.
Since we only had three rotations I had 90 minutes to teach ELAR that year- I felt like I had plenty of time. The following school year, I was offered the position as a 4th grade teacher in our Dual Language program. I was very excited for this opportunity, I have a special place in my heart for bilingual kids, and snatched it up. However, I would soon learn that I only had 65 minutes now to teach ELAR, which included writing ( a huge focus in 4th grade in Texas because that is when we take our Writing and Reading standardized tests). I had to come up with a concise plan that targeted all those TEKS and get it into 65 minutes a day.
After about a year of trying to organize my thoughts and get it all crunched in, I came upon Jessica Ivey's mentor sentences and book studies and loved them. They really helped me cram a lot in to one class period. It also helped me be able to focus what I was teaching each week by using a Mentor Text. Ideas by Jivey didn't have all the writing components that I needed, however, so I began combining some of those ideas with some of her lessons.
Soon I began finding other books I loved and began creating my own week long Reading/Writing/Grammar lessons all based on a Mentor Text. That's when my Redfly Reading Curriculum was born.
I now have 33 weeks of Mentor Text lessons- I keep finding new books I like- and also have about 6 themed weeks based on review for upcoming state assessments. All of my lessons are on Google Slides, as this was the best way for me to stay organized and not lose my train of thought as I am teaching several classes. This year I have even added mentor texts that relate to Texas History, since I also taught Social Studies. I was able to integrate those TEKS in with my Reading Curriculum.
I am working on getting all of these on TPT, but for now, you can click here to see my lessons for my first week back to school with the mentor text, Do Unto Otters by Laurie Keller.
