Using Your Teacher Manuals

At my school we use Houghton Mifflin as our reading curriculum.  It introduces letters, sounds and sight words, as well as teaches reading comprehension skills.  I love the Alpahfriends they use to introduce the letters, and my kiddos LOVE the songs and motions that go with them {and it helps them remember their letter sounds}.

Of course I don't use ALL of the curriculum {shh, don't tell my district} and I supplement a lot, but it is nice to be able to grab my manual and flip right to the pages for the correct day.

The curriculum is divided into 3 week themes for a total of 10 themes.  I have taken all of my manuals and tabbed them like this. . . . .

The tabs are labeled like  -  Theme.Week.Day or 10.1.1 {Theme 10, Week 1, Day 1}.  This is also nice when I have a substitute because I can just tell them what tab to turn to and voila, they are ready to go {hopefully}.

P.S. This is our next theme, I just brought it home so I could tab it and see what's coming up so I can plan.

P.P.S The themes are great, but our current theme is "Spring is Here" and it's not quite spring up here, nor do we have "typical" spring.  We spend a lot of time comparing and contrasting what spring looks like in "the lower 48" and what it looks like in Alaska.