Geodes® books have been in use at Odyssey Charter School (FL) in grades K–2 since the 2021–2022 school year. We sat down with four Odyssey educators to hear more about how they have integrated Geodes into their literacy instruction and the impact Geodes have had on both teacher and student success.
Meet the Educators
Lauren graduated from the University of Central Florida in 2015. She is in her 10th year of teaching, with five of those years at Odyssey Charter School, and she is in her third year as team lead of kindergarten.
Rima went to the University of Florida and has a background in elementary and special needs education. She is in her seventh year of teaching and has spent the entirety of her teaching career at Odyssey Charter School. She taught kindergarten for two years before moving up to grade 1 and becoming the team lead.
Dana has been teaching for 27 years and is in her eighth year at Odyssey Charter School. Throughout her career, she has taught nearly every grade level from kindergarten through grade 6 but has exclusively taught grade 2 while at Odyssey. She has spent the last 5 years as the second-grade team lead.
Michael received his bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Alvernia University and has a master’s degree in teaching English as a second language from the Universidad Del Turabo. He has over 13 years of experience teaching and coaching in the primary grades.
What literacy materials do you use and how do you structure your literacy block?
Lauren (Kindergarten): This is our sixth year implementing Fundations® as our foundational skills program for grades K–2, and we also have Geodes to go along with it. We brought in Geodes the first year that they became available so that the texts students are using are connected to their phonics levels and skills. Before that we were using the Primary Phonics readers, and they are very, very basic compared to Geodes. We were very happy to adopt Geodes because they were at a higher level with more vocabulary, more content, and were better for comprehension.
We brought in Geodes the first year that they became available so that the texts students are using are connected to their phonics levels and skills ... We were very happy to adopt Geodes because they were at a higher level with more vocabulary, more content, and were better for comprehension.
—Lauren Suggitt, Kindergarten Team Lead
We are also supplementing our phonological awareness skills by using Heggerty because we realized there was some deficit with students’ phonological awareness. And we are using Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) for ELA instruction—so we are working on background knowledge, reading skills, and writing skills with that.
Rima (Grade 1): In terms of structure, Fundations® and CKLA are typically used in the morning, and that’s all whole-group instruction time. Geodes are typically used at our teacher table during our station rotations during our literacy block. Every grade level also has some sort of fluency station, and once students have leveled up to the next set of Geodes, we place the books that they just finished in the fluency station so that they can continue to practice them with a buddy or on their own. Then we also have a phonics station, which relates to the Fundations® scope and sequence, and a high frequency word station that focuses on sight words from Fundations®, Fry’s First 100, and i-Ready, and that list is also organized by Fundations® skill.
Can you give an example of how you introduce a skill and then practice with Geodes?
Lauren (Kindergarten): In kindergarten, one of the really important pieces for us is sight words, or Trick Words in Fundations®. So say the week is focusing on ‘is’ and ‘his’ and we’re introducing those and practicing them. We can pull the Geodes books that have those high-frequency words in them and use them at our teacher table during Geodes time. We will go through the decodable words, go through those trick words, and give students background knowledge and review vocabulary before we even get into the book. I think that’s one key thing in kindergarten that helps their reading come along: how we can tie the trick words from Fundations® into our Geodes practice, and it all works together so that students get really fluid with those and don’t have to stop and tap out those tricky words.
Rima (Grade 1): We have the same idea in grade 1 as well. Our Fundations® instruction is done whole group, and then when we introduce Geodes to the kids, our less proficient students primarily focus on the sight words—the tapping out and blending aspect of reading the Geodes. Our on grade-level and higher students might focus more on vocabulary and comprehension and tie their work with Geodes into what they’re learning from CKLA. We check their fluency and make sure they can read the book. Or they might be working with the phonics skills at a faster pace. So we might take the Fundations® lesson that meets their need and introduce it in that small group setting by using Geodes. Let’s say it’s a group that’s focusing on consonant blends. I know to go to Module 2, Set 2 of Geodes and start using those books to get students practicing even if we aren’t there in whole-group instruction yet.
How are you grouping students for station time?
Lauren (Kindergarten): In kindergarten, since we start off fresh at the ground level, we baseline test every kindergartener during the first three days of school. That’s what we spend our time doing, just getting a baseline on everything that a student could know. Once we have that data, we start off with grouping our kids by their letter recognition and letter sound recognition. Later in the school year we group students based on their sight word scores so they can work at the sight word, phonics, and Geodes stations together.
Rima (Grade 1): The kindergarten team shares their data with us and lets us know where each student left off so that we don’t have to start fresh with them again. In grade 1 we start looking more at their phonics skills rather than their sight words, and we have them grouped accordingly in that way. Our phonics station is leveled or grouped according to the Fundations® scope and sequence, so they start out with their basic sounds and then they move into CVC blending and then they add diagraphs and then trigraphs. We have that system all the way across grades K–2; that way, no matter when a student is coming in or who their teacher is, we know that if a student is at level 5, that means they are working on glued sounds or whatever it is.
Dana (Grade 2): And then we build on that. We take their scores from grade 1 in their phonics station, and we look at their phonics scores on their i-Ready and STAR tests. After we compile the data, we group them together and try to match the Geodes with where they are testing and progress according to their skills and their needs.
How has student engagement and enjoyment of books changed with Geodes?
Lauren (Kindergarten): I definitely think that Primary Phonics readers were very unengaging for a kindergartener. They were black and white. They were small. But the Geodes are bright, they’re colorful, and they are larger than the Primary Phonics readers that we had. And then I think one of the biggest things is concepts of print in kindergarten—front cover, back cover, tracking the words, those kinds of things. We couldn’t do that with the Primary Phonics readers. Being able to have all those text features in one place with Geodes helps us hit a lot of skills at one time.
“You can take the same Geodes book and work with it in so many different ways, and the kids are happy staying within the same book because they really do enjoy the content of them.”
—Rima Chakhtoura, Grade 1 Team Lead
Rima (Grade 1): The Primary Phonics readers are very basic. They are truly just about whatever the skill is—short A or short vowel sounds or whatever it might be—so to take those books and tie in vocabulary and comprehension was a stretch, whereas Geodes give us more opportunities to work within the same text. In grade 1 we talk to our teachers about how they’re not just working on phonics or fluency or automaticity with Geodes. After students master that part, teachers can take the same book and focus more on vocabulary and comprehension. You’re not just moving students on. You can take the same Geodes book and work with it in so many different ways, and the kids are happy staying within the same book because they really do enjoy the content of them. They especially enjoy the nonfiction texts and learning about text features and all that stuff because they don’t get a lot of exposure to that through CKLA.
Dana (Grade 2): We used Florida Ready in the past, which was really difficult. Students would be reading long vowel sounds and suffix endings before we even taught them in Fundations®. The texts were based around the ELA standard at the time, but they didn’t correlate with what we were teaching in phonics at all. A lot of the kids that were not on grade level couldn’t even read the passages because there was no way for them to decode the texts.
We also tried the Fountas and Pinnell readers, but there were a lot of outdated approaches in that. And then we tried using some of the CKLA readers, but the CKLA scope and sequence for phonics didn’t match what we were teaching in Fundations® either and their approach was completely different. So we were excited that Geodes offered texts that went along with our phonics instruction.
“Geodes let us find that sweet spot of texts that are not too easy and not too difficult, and that has been really, really hard to find … Having Fundations®, our phonics station, and Geodes all working together is amazing. And we see the results of it. I think last year we hit 80 percent proficiency in grade 2 on the STAR reading test, and we do attribute a lot of that to how well everything works together now.
—Mike Senick, K–2 Instructional Coach
Mike (Instructional Coach): Geodes let us find that sweet spot of texts that are not too easy and not too difficult, and that has been really, really hard to find. We tried at least four different ways to do that reading instruction, but now having Fundations®, our phonics station, and Geodes all working together is amazing. And we see the results of it. I think last year we hit 80 percent proficiency in grade 2 on the STAR reading test, and we do attribute a lot of that to how well everything works together now.
Do students have a favorite Geodes book or text set?
Lauren (Kindergarten): I would say, in kindergarten, students really like Module 3, Set 1: Homelife with Build a Log Cabin and Bath Night and Ice Harvest because they don’t know that we didn’t used to have faucets to take a bath and how you kept food cold a long time ago. It’s building really good background knowledge at the same time that they’re practicing phonics skills. So they really like that set and then they really like Module 3, Set 2: Transportation that has Fly, Amelia, Fly and The First Car to Get That Far, which is about two men who drive across the country.
Rima (Grade 1): We just finished Module 2, Set 1: Creature Code, which is about how animals communicate with each other and then Set 2: Safety First, which is about how animals stay safe. We have those two sets back-to-back, and when we level up to the next module, students are so upset because it isn’t related to animals at all. By the time we get to those sets, we have usually covered animals and habitats and all that content in CKLA, so students are even more excited about what they can learn about that topic on their own through Geodes.
Dana (Grade 2): Our kids get into competition with each other during Module 1: A Season of Change and compare what season they are each in and talk about those books. And then when we read Module 2: The American West about westward expansion students have said, “This goes right with the lesson we did,” making the connection to the CKLA and Core Knowledge History & Geography (CKHG) content we are learning. So they like to read those Geodes because they see that the content all goes together. I had one student who had the CKHG book, the Geodes books, and his notebook from CKLA all together, and he was comparing the three.
Can you expand on the connections between Geodes and CKLA and how you are able to reinforce them?
Mike (Instructional Coach): We just touched on two of those content connections in grade 2: cycles of nature and westward expansion are two perfect alignments with CKLA. Some of the teachers were asking if they should move up certain books in Geodes to line up with CKLA, and so one of the things we talked about more this year is that it’s not bad for students to get background knowledge from CKLA to use with Geodes later when they get to it. Or if Geodes touches a topic first, it’s not bad to build up students’ background knowledge there and then reactivate it when they’re in CKLA.
Rima (Grade 1): To that point, we don’t start our stations until about six weeks into the school year, so we would have already covered our first few topics from CKLA by that point. The students learn about Anansi and the stories Anansi took from the sky god in CKLA, and Anansi and the Pot Of Beans is also the first Geodes text that they read in grade 1. So the minute I put that Geodes book out and they see the word Anansi, they are so excited that they get to actually read one of the legends. It’s cool, before we even start, I can use their prior knowledge from CKLA and ask what they remember about Anansi.
Dana (Grade 2): My co-teacher usually takes each Geodes text and prints out the vocabulary words and takes whatever benchmarks for comprehension that we’re working on during our CKLA time–we might be talking about author’s purpose or central message—and he pulls those questions in for the kids to look up and answer during Geodes time. So we try to tie what we’re teaching through CKLA, the standard or benchmark, in to the questioning for Geodes as well.
How are students using Geodes at home?
Lauren (Kindergarten): After a group finishes the four books in a Geodes set with the teacher, we send the black and white My Geodes copy for that set home with them. We have a specific email that we send to the parents to let them know that their child just finished reading these books in class. We list all these skills that they were working on including phonics, scooping for fluency, and comprehension. And we end the email asking parents to please reinforce these skills at home.
In kindergarten, it is crucial that we get them excited to learn to read, and so I have a special set of sparkly gel pens that we pull out on My Geodes day. The books have a “this book belongs to” space in the front of them, so students get to pick their favorite sparkly gel pen, practice their name writing, and we put their first and last name in their black and white Geodes to take home. It really does make it special for them and make them excited to show their grown-up at home.
Rima (Grade 1): Same with us: After students finish a set, we send the black and white copies home. When we have the parents at school for open house or conferences, we do reiterate to the parents that if students are getting these black and white readers sent home, to please practice reading with them. We let the parents know that if the book is coming home, it’s because students are on the next set and they should be able to read most of it on their own, except for the words that might not be decodable just yet.
Mike (Instructional Coach): It’s always fun to be in a classroom on the day teachers are handing out the black and white Geodes because it is a celebration. I filled in for a 2nd grade teacher last year quite a bit, and I can remember some of their faces when they came in and realized they were going to be taking those books home because they moved on to the next set. We do try to make them aware of what an accomplishment it is, that they’re taking home a book that actually has four books in it. So the kids generally are pretty excited about it. Even our more reluctant readers get excited because it’s a set of books that they’re feeling some success with and they’ve got lots of practice with, so they’re normally excited to take those home and show their parents what they can do.
What else would you like to share about your experience with Geodes?
Rima (Grade 1): We love Geodes. The alignment is the best part. I only had one year where everything was mixed and matched and I was thankful to have Mike guiding me around how we could merge it all together. But it’s nice now being in a school that has everything working together for teachers. When you have brand new teachers coming in fresh from college or veteran teachers who may have good and bad experiences under their belt, you can look at them and say bring these three teacher’s guides together and I can show you easily how they align. I think that is the biggest benefit that we’ve noticed the past few years. On top of that, we know it’s good for the kids. Our scores have been very good lately.
Alyssa Buccella
Alyssa has nearly a decade of education research experience. She has led equity and student success research to support K-12 public school districts across the country in addressing their most pressing challenges, including college access, mental health, social emotional learning, and racial justice. Alyssa holds a B.A. in Psychology and Global Studies and an M.Ed. in Globalization and Educational Change from Lehigh University.
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