A Litte Extra Practice

I have to admit, I am little nervous to start back to school tomorrow. I LOVE my job (really I do) and never complain about going to work unless I've had a vacation. Don't get me wrong, I love a good vacation, but it is really hard for me to get back in the groove.
You are probably thinking...uh...you have been in school for 42 days and you are nervous. Yep. Here's why. Last year I posted about a great intervention kit called LLI (Leveled Literacy Intervention). You can find that here.

Well, after much persuading and looking for funds ($3000 a pop), we got not 1, but 2 of these puppies. A few schools in our district have used it and SWEAR upon it. Well, after taking some time to get in the groove, MAP test, and get to know our kiddos we start this program tomorrow. Unfortunately, we are a very small rural school with not a lot of extra funding. We barely get Title I. While we don't have a lot of children in low poverty, we still have kiddos (quite a few) that are Tier 3. Since our funding is very small, Kindergarten does not get a lot of extra RTI time. Well, okay....none. We do have full time assistants so we have worked out a way to get this RTI time done with our kiddos.

I will begin using LLI with my 4 sweeties tomorrow while the other students are in the computer lab everyday with my assistants for 30 minutes. I have no idea why I am nervous but I am. It takes a little preparation but I got that finished before I left for break. I am PRAYING that I see wonders done with this program and my little babies shoot right on up and out of this Tier 3. Do you use LLI in your school? I would love to hear your feedback on it.

Speaking of those little babies, I have a few one who hasn't retained anything we have learned. For the most part, my kiddos are sounding out CVC words like a champ. I do have 3 (my other LLI kiddos) who are struggling, but for the most part I can use what I am using with the rest of the class and differentiate it for their needs. I had this same situation last year where I just needed a completely different activity for a few students who hadn't retained any of the first 6 letters and we were starting to double up so I had to pull back with them. I began creating simple worksheets to use with these kids. Each week, the worksheets looked the same so they knew what to expect and do. The only change was the letter, sound, and/or sight word. I used these along with TONS of hands on activities (Lakeshore alphabet tubs, magnetic letters, letter bean bags, picture cards, etc, etc, etc). After having these files sitting in a file on my computer I am slowly adding them to my TPT store. (I am having to change some clipart so that it is royalty free and add cutesy covers...you know...you can't put anything up for the public unless it is cute.) I have now added Mm and Aa. If you are interested, you can get them in my TPT store by clicking on the pictures below!