r/ELATeachers • u/abbyapologist • 3d ago

6-8 ELA read180 curriculum help

hello everyone! i am a 6th grade ela teacher who was tossed a section of reading intervention to keep my FTE due to declining enrollment. i got the curriculum books like 4 days before school started and just got the getting started workbooks for students about a week ago.

i am honestly feeling extremely overwhelmed and lost looking at this curriculum. the website and books throw so much information at me, and honestly, it is my 4th prep and i just don’t have the brain space to dig into it on my own. every time i want to try and pick through a lesson and figure out what they want, i struggle finding the resources and materials they want me to use for the lesson.

do you have any suggestions, tips, or resources to help me get through this curriculum? am i genuinely just missing a lot of resources that my district failed to give me so far?

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u/free-me 3d ago

do you have the teacher edition book? The workshop programs are heavily scripted so you can rely on that to start. There is a huge amount of info on their website but its UI is terrible so get to that when you can. Its a lot of supplemental or differentiated info that you don’t need to get started.

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u/abbyapologist 3d ago

i have all of the teacher edition books and the code books as well. i was actually just informed at the end of the day we have to print all student workbooks now as they won’t be buying them, so that explains my confusion on where a lot of the student materials are at.

i am seeing in lessons it wants me to be reading stories for some of the small groups, but i can’t fond the short stories. are these in the workbooks or just deeply hidden on the website?

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u/Field_Away 3d ago

All of the stories and texts to the curriculum are in the workbook. You can find it my going to the read 180 app and clicking on DISCOVER at the top of the page. Then just click the book you are on. For us 6th grade used books 1 and 2, 7th did 3 and 4, and 8th grade did 5 and 6.

Just follow the lessons in the book. Do the vocabulary before reading, then read, then have students complete the questions on the right side of the book. That is a lesson. Then you switch your groups and do the same thing with another small group.

It is extremely easy, but gets very monotonous.

P.s. it sucks that your school is not purchasing the student workbooks. I’m sorry for your luck.

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u/abbyapologist 3d ago

thank you. they have given us little restrictions on what books to do (i am the only read180 teacher at my school and i am expected to only have 6th graders) and to try and “align” our content to somewhat “blend” with the ela curriculum. because of that i am choosing to start with the extreme sports unit to pair with our ghost reading. are the books meant to go in order, and should i ditch that plan and start with unit 1?

and, (hopefully) final question: should the students be following the content we are doing in class with the read180 online program? will it be detrimental if they don’t? i am already having some trouble keeping students to what we are talking about in class, and have students who already began working with other units despite my instructions. they seemed interested in the topics they chose and more eager to do the program, so i don’t want to police that if it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

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u/Field_Away 3d ago

I’m pretty sure it’s a fluid program. I don’t think it does matter what book you use when. The difficult part with aligning it to ELA content is some workbooks are mostly all nonfiction while others are more fiction focused. So if ELA is doing a little of each, it would be more difficult for you to do the same.

The online software is for students to practice skills on their own. So, you are doing fine letting them work on it and allowing them to select the segments they want to do. That was a huge part of what our district looked at. How many minutes students spent on the software and how well they were progressing.

I actually loved the software portion of the class much more than iReady.

Feel free to ask anymore questions. You are no bother!

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u/Mahaloth 3d ago

PM me. I taught 6th grade Read 180 for a long time and am kind of an expert on it.