How to Organize All About Reading…or Not!

You’ve probably heard that we make it easy to customize our programs to suit your student’s needs, but did you know that All About Reading can meet your needs too? Watch the video below to see how!

Which Type of Organizer Are You?

Did you watch the video? Can you relate to Simple Samantha? Or are you more of a Weekly Wendy or Detailed Dorothy? Read on…and then leave us a comment and let us know what your style is!

1. Do You Love to Just “Open and Go”?

   Simple Samantha believes the entire point of an open-and-go program is, well, just that…opening and going. And she’s pretty open about it.

   Um…what? Organize? I just open my Teacher’s Manual and start teaching. If there’s an activity, I cut it out while my kid reads to me. Or better yet, I have her cut it!”

   

   Samantha knows that All About Reading is easy to teach right out of the box. All you have to do is take a minute or two to preview the lesson and gather the necessary activity pages, flashcards, and letter tiles. Then simply follow the script to teach like a pro! Gently scripted lesson plans ensure that you’ll know exactly how to teach every single lesson with no advanced preparation needed. Yep, you heard that right…none. Zilch. Zero.

   If you prefer to keep things simple like Samantha, you’re in good company. This is the way All About Reading was actually designed to be used. We’ve done all the research and prep work so you can devote your time to teaching your child.

2. Are You a “Plan Ahead” Kind of Person?

   Although Weekly Wendy knows she doesn’t have to do major prep, she likes to take it up a notch. She prefers to prep things ahead, but in bite-size chunks, a week at a time.

   I prep my lessons a week in advance. I look through the teacher’s manual to see what I’ll need for the week, then I cut out the activities and zip-bag it all. You can never be too prepared.”

   

   If you’re like Wendy, you like to be prepared, but you don’t want to spend all summer doing it! A little bit of planning ahead helps you feel prepared and ready to face the week. And that’s definitely not a bad thing!

3. Are You Happiest When You’re Organizing “All the Things”?

   Detailed Dorothy loves to get it all done ahead of time…way ahead of time. Her favorite part of teaching is preparing and organizing her curriculum months in advance. It’s incredibly fun and supremely satisfying to know that everything is ready to go when she needs it. And when she’s all done prepping, she lets out a big sigh of satisfaction…

   Ahhh…all ready for lesson one!”

   As part of her detailed preparations, Dorothy laminates everything—activity pages, fluency practice sheets, and flashcards—and organizes it all in a great big binder. (Dorothy’s laminator is by far her favorite homeschool organizational item!)

   

   By the way, Dorothy is teaching multiple kids and just loves knowing that everything is prepped and organized in a way that makes it easy to juggle all the levels and lessons every day, all year long. And we totally get that!

What’s the Right Way to Organize All About Reading?

If you’ve ever spent time over at our All About Reading and All About Spelling Facebook Support Group, you likely discovered a wide range of ways to prep and organize your AAR materials, and a lot of lighthearted discussion about which method is “best.”

But you know what? There is no best way! All the organizing styles above fit perfectly with All About Reading. While AAR is a scripted, open-and-go program that doesn’t need to be prepped in advance, you’re free to be you. And if that means laminating everything, go for it! But if not, that’s fine too.

The Bottom Line

All About Reading is an adaptable, approachable, and adjustable program…no matter how it’s prepped. So organize (or not!) to your heart’s content. Because no matter how you prepare and organize your lessons, All About Reading will do exactly what it was designed to do…make reading easy to teach and easy to learn. And that’s the most important thing!

Are you a Simple Samantha, a Weekly Wendy, or a Detailed Dorothy? We would love to hear about it in the comments below.