When I first heard about the Wonders program, I was skeptical. Could a basal reading program really be that beneficial to my students? And then, when we received all the materials a month before school was out, I was overwhelmed. There was SO. MUCH. STUFF! And there was even more stuff online! I didn't even know where to begin!
Fortunately, my school gave us 4 collaboration days after the kids were gone to really delve into Wonders (and Mastery Connect as well...but that's a different story). So after setting up shop in the faculty room, the investigation into Wonders and what it would look like in my classroom began.
The first thing I noticed (besides the amount of stuff) were the teaching manuals. There are 6 units that go throughout the year. Our principal has asked that we teach the first unit with fidelity, so I really took a look at the teacher's edition of the first unit.
I noticed that each week there were certain things that we covered like
- An essential question (different from an essential standard)
- Genre
- Comprehension Strategy
- Comprehension Skill
- Vocabulary Strategy
- Phonics/Word Study/Fluency/Spelling Focus
- Writing Trait
- Grammar Emphasis
This ended up being really helpful for me, because I went through each week of each unit to figure out what I was supposed to be teaching. I physically turned each of the pages to see what they looked like. As I did that, I realized that although there was still a lot of stuff in this program, it could actually be beneficial to my students. There were plenty of different stories to teach all of the different skills and strategies that my kids needed to learn.
Now, what I typed up was basically the unit overview found at the beginning of each teacher's manual. But I have a deeper understanding of the program now, because I took the time to create ownership of it for me. We do this with our students all the time! We can either give them a multiplication chart and hope they learn what 7x8 is, or they can create the chart for themselves, and have a better chance of learning for themselves what 7x8 is.
I shared what I had done with my colleagues, but the advice I gave them was to go through the manuals for themselves. I can do the work for them, but it won't mean as much to them.
Once I went through each page and saw what/how we were teaching, I was then able to start figuring out what I wanted this to look like in my classroom. I decided I wanted to have one of my bulletin boards dedicated to the strategies and skills we would be learning each week. I even created a paper for each of the essential questions. I'm going to print these off and switch them out each week. These will help remind my students what we are focusing on for the week.
Once I get my classroom set up, I'll post more picture about how I use Wonders in my classroom. I know it can be overwhelming, but if your school has adopted this program, I really recommend taking the time to map out what you are expected to teach, and how you want to do it.
Because it still your classroom. :)
Happy teaching!
