To involve students’ parents in Imagine It!, hold Parent Nights throughout the school year. You can teach the parents to read exactly like you teach their children, using phonemic awareness activities and phonics lessons directly from the Imagine It! Teacher’s Edition. Give parents a handout of what you are doing so they may take it home to practice with their children. That way, when parents see their children’s homework, they recognize everything and know how to use it with their children because they have been to Parent Night. Parents are so grateful for the extra help.

To help build fluency, hold "Fluency Fridays." Introduce the decodable book from Imagine It! on Thursday and do several reads together with the students. On Friday, give students a fluency folder to record their book and timed reading. Do this for about 20 minutes. After 10 recorded readings, the children have the option of being timed. During the week they can practice fluency with any of their decodable books. Students love practicing fluency this way, and the children who are shy can take their time practicing until they feel like they are ready to be tested!

For students who need practice with correct word order in sentences, try this fun exercise using wooden blocks. To create the blocks, type three sentences taken directly from the Imagine It! Student Reader. Use scissors to cut each sentence apart by words. Attach each word in a sentence to a wooden block and put them in a plastic bag. Then, read several pages of the story together. Finally, the student arranges the blocks so the words make sense and have correct punctuation. If the student needs help, he or she can find the sentence in the story. After arranging the words in the right order, the student copies the sentence into his or her notebook correctly. This provides working with each sentence many times, in many ways.

Reader’s Theater is an excellent way to encourage students to re-read text. Even the more challenging expository Imagine It! stories can often be turned in to Reader’s Theater presentations. Having students perform the scripts not only increases fluency, but also it improves student comprehension by putting students in the middle of the story where they can begin to understand its complexities. A final presentation of the script for a real audience (of parents or other classes) gives students the motivation to get better.

Teachers can make vocabulary come alive for English-Language Learners in Imagine It! by creating PowerPoint presentations with pictures to illustrate the vocabulary words in them. Students can view the PowerPoints in a whole group while the teacher introduces new words or in small groups during Independent Work Time/Workshop time as a review. They also can be used in pre-teaching vocabulary to intervention students.

When working on the Imagine It! Concept/Question Board, give your students specific jobs. For example, Super Snoops search magazines for pictures and articles relating to the theme. Word Wizards locate words related to the theme. Have them use a dictionary, thesaurus, or books to find words, look for synonyms, and look in magazines or newspapers to cut words related to the theme. Artistic Artists draw pictures related to the theme and make a title or border for the Concept/Question Board. Nosey Newspeople search newspapers for pictures or articles relating to the theme. Once they’ve collected the information, ask them to glue their piece to an index card, write a reason why it belongs on the Concept Board and post it to the board. These jobs can be changed to challenge upper grade kids as well. The Concept/Question Board will be off to a great start after doing this kick-off with students. Then it is ready to be revisited after or during each selection in the unit!

For spelling practice in Imagine It!, have students write the words down in a spelling practice booklet that they keep in their reading folder. In the first half of the year, practice twice a week, using the spelling and dictation found in the Teacher Edition. When the second half of the year comes, practice once a week, but use the Intervention lessons that correlate with the selection. Do this practice right after working on blending and/or words and sentences. Students love it when they can figure out how to spell the challenge word! It especially appeals to low-performing students, because they feel successful at something, and when they get stuck on a word, remind them how well they do when they are spelling and to use the same skills they have practiced.

Older students using Imagine It! can use a hand-held palm device as they work through exercises. Using the palms for clues, problems, and wonderings gives students more involvement. They each have to do the exercises on their own palm so it increases writing as well. This gives them more hands-on involvement and a better understanding of what they are doing.

As students come into class each morning, let them pre-read the Imagine It! Decodable Book for the day. When it is time to read the book in class, the students have already had experience with the book. This also helps the slower readers and gives them extra time to read it.

Here is a way to get the students really excited about the Imagine It! story and to deepen comprehension and connectedness with it. It’s called ‘A Penny for Your Thoughts and A Dollar for Your Questions.’ After building background, do the first read of the story. Give each student four sticky notes. Tell them to label two of the notes ‘thoughts’ and two of them ‘questions.’ While reading the story to the students, they record on their sticky notes thoughts that come to mind and questions that arise. Every two to three pages, pause and say, ‘A Penny for Your Thoughts and A Dollar for Your Questions.’ The students always have things to share and it helps build the Concept/Question Board!

To review the Imagine It! Word Structure and Phonics/Fluency charts, have students sit, each with individual dry-erase white boards. Go through five lines of words as a group, then tell them, for example, ‘I’m looking for a word that rhymes with _______, or a word that is a synonym or antonym for _____, and they have to write the word on the dry-erase white board and show the teacher once every student has written something. This practice works better than asking students to raise hands because everyone must think, write, and stay engaged. It’s also good handwriting practice. And, it gives teachers a quick snapshot of who’s understanding and who needs a little more practice.

For an Imagine It! Decodable Book activity, have students look through their Decodable Book for the phonetic elements on which the class is focusing. Students read through their books, color those words that have the element, and then share their work. Teachers write all of students’ words on the board, then pass out a regular white piece of paper, and fold it into 16 squares. Use this folded paper for a Bingo game. Students write any of the words from the board on their Bingo card. The teacher then calls the words, and students mark them off on their Bingo card.

In Imagine It! for Kindergarten, put sight words on cutout pieces of colored sentence strips. Put the words in a pocket chart and make a memory matching game. Students love to play this game, and as a bonus, they are learning the sight words!

All students learn differently. If students do not immediately understand the ‘hand’ in Imagine It!, try using guided reading balls to encourage students to discuss the stories. Each panel of a beach ball has a discussion-starter question. The students lightly throw the ball to another student, and then whichever question their right thumb is on, they answer. Some example questions include, ‘What was your favorite part of the story?,’ ‘What happened at the end?,’ ‘What was the title?,’ and ‘Who was the main character?’ Along with the question, students state their opinion with an explanation of the story.

When blending lines in Imagine It!, try numbering them. When you ask students to look for a certain word, they show you by holding up the right number of fingers for the line number. This gets all the students engaged, not just the ones that like to shout out the answer.

To help students learn the weekly Imagine It! vocabulary words, play Vocabulary Tic Tac Toe! As students learn new words, list them on a poster. Every week, split the class into two teams. Give a definition or ask for a synonym or antonym for one of the unit vocabulary words. Have students look at the poster and choose the word they think is correct. If the student chooses the right word, he can put an X or an O in a tic-tac-toe square. The first team to get three in a row wins. Students love to play this game, and they really learn their words!

With extra Imagine It! Sound Spelling Cards, create a flip chart by punching eyeholes at the top of each card and attaching them to plywood to form a triangular base. This keeps cards together and in sequence, providing an efficient and fun way to present them to students in a flashcard format.

During an Imagine It! lesson, ask students to sit on the floor close to the board. Introduce a new sound before sounding and blending begins. Then, do ‘alien talk!’ Put a row of consonants on the board and underneath a row of vowel sounds. Blend these letters to create ‘alien talk.’ Students love this!