It is the second week of school and today was the first day my students were Plugged-In.  We began independent reading in class and I think it went very well.  I have about half of my students choose to use a book of cd from the PITR Level 2 collection.  Some students chose to read books from this selection, but opted not to use the cd support.  I noticed a few of students who chose not to use the cd had a difficult time staying on task with the reading, so next week I'll be making a few changes.  All and all, I will say almost of my students were engaged and were even fighting over the books already!

 I teach 9th grade Reading.  I'm going to begin "Among the Hidden" tomorrow with my freshmen.  Last year when I did this book my students were very engaged and it was easy to keep them on task with the reading.  Like Lee, I'm not going to over do it with supports and strategies with this book.  Though I want to make sure that they understand the main idea, build their vocabularies, and making connections to the novel, I also want my students to enjoy reading our first class novel!  I will definitely do a word a day and use the visualizing strategies. I plan on using the nonfiction readers with my students, as my students last year found the articles interesting.

 I don't plan on doing Lit Circles until October when I know my students better and spend more time setting up my classroom community.

Well, that's it for now.  I'll post later when we being our novel and share our progress.