When Amanda Duke told her husband about a strategy she’d learned for taking guided reading notes, he was shocked.
Take notes on sticky notes and then attach them to sheets of paper? It didn’t sound practical or professional to him.
And Amanda agreed
When Amanda Duke told her husband about a strategy she’d learned for taking guided reading notes, he was shocked.
Take notes on sticky notes and then attach them to sheets of paper? It didn’t sound practical or professional to him.
And Amanda agreed. As a Kindergarten and first grade teacher, she’s always loved teaching guided reading. Amanda sees the incredible power of working with kids in a small group setting.
But she’s always struggled to find practical solutions to guided reading organizational challenges (so have I!). She wanted an easy way to switch up her groups, keep and reuse lesson plans, and take notes on her students.
When Amanda went looking for technology that would do this, she didn’t find any apps that quite fit the bill. Sure, there’s Evernote and other great organizational apps. But none of them were designed just for teachers.
So Amanda set out to make her own app. She drew up some plans and talked with other teachers to get their input. She and her husband worked with local developers to create a model, and they continued to revise that model based upon input from other teachers.
And that’s how Guided Reading Organizer (GRO) was born!
When Amanda shared her story with me, I was so impressed with how much time and thought she (and other teachers) have put into this project. But what’s even more impressive is how awesome and practical this ap