TPT Treasures & Blogging Honesty

Happy Tuesday!

I completely missed my Sunday Monday posting because I was spending all my time refreshing  my accuweather app. Up until the I heard the words "MAJOR snowmageddon," I was doing just fine and being uber-productive. Then that little snowflake on my screen got in the way.

We were supposed to have a blizzard, then just 4-6 inches, and then...a dusting (that my windshield wipers easily removed). We did end up with a delay yesterday (& hardly any students), but today doesn't look too hopeful.

I'm still looking for my productivity I lost on Sunday...in the meantime, I'm sharing a fantastic TPT Treasure:

Last summer, I took an incredible Text Complexity: Close Reading course. I thought I knew what Close Reading was, but this course provided the nitty gritty and really built my confidence in how to help my students dig deeper into the text (vs. "read it again!"). 

To prepare my firsties, I purchased just about every close reading material offered on TPT. So many of them were absolutely wonderful and this collection was the all-out winner for us:

Text Evidence Reading Passages

I loved this series (& so do my students) for so many reasons, including:

TOPICS - they are high interest and include both fiction/nonfiction (PAIRED!)

COLOR-CODING - my students love color-coding as much as I do! It gives my students something to DO while rereading the text :)

QUANTITY - I absolutely ♥ the bundle. There are so many wonderful products out there that are smaller, but a high-quality bundle wins out every time for me. It really helps my students who thrive on routine. They are able to be successfully independent because they are familiar with the process.

VERSATILITY - here's my favorite part...I'm using these pages with my new 3rd grade reading intervention group. I spent most of my weekend creating their new Close Reading notebooks...

I guess I was productive :)

I also purchased Miss DeCarbo's most recent inference packet and interspersed some of the pages into the text evidence bundle 

(we are using the Level 2 pages). 

I have been custom-writing close reading passages for my own students this year and pairing themed task cards for our weekly sensory bins. I've been working on it since August and should be finished around 2017 ;)

Before I sign off, I just read this blogging article and loved it. I was nodding my head in agreement with so many of these points, did any resonate with you?  I can't wait to read more from 

A Girl and a Glue Gun!

Before I sign off (yay, I blogged!!), I want to shout-out a HUGE Thank You to all my Facebook "likes" old and new. I've seen a double-digit increase over the past 2 weeks (any guesses why? new algorithms?) and I'm humbled and grateful you found me :)  

Have a terrific Tuesday!

Jen