EnVision Math, RTI, and Ruby Red Shoes....OH MY!!!

Well first the most important part of my post.....I finally got some ruby red shoes just like Dorothy's. My awesome sister-in-law, brother, niece, and nephew gave me these shoes for my birthday. I LOVE THEM!!!! Here are a few pictures: (yes I had a little photo shoot with my new shoes)

Now on to the other stuff. This year we started using the Envisions math program. I am looking for other teachers who use this program to give me some insight into how they make it work for all students. First of all, I should admit that I did not want this program as I have only ever heard negative things about "boxed" programs like this in the past. My district has not used any boxed programs since I have been there and I have felt pretty lucky about that. The reality is that it doesn't matter that I didn't want to use it, it was voted on by the district so now I have to use it.

Here are my concerns with the program: It doesn't allow for much of any acceleration for students who might already know most of a topic or all of a particular topic. Also for struggling students the format (Daily CC review, Colorful paper lesson, Video, Color paper guided practice, quick check, centers (I use a math buffet format), and reteach), is just too much too fast. I am hoping that some other teachers out there are successfully using it and can give me some insight into how I can do what I have been told to do which is use this program (without any supplemental materials at this point) and have it work for all of my students.  I am really hoping there are teachers out there using it and loving it who can help me go from not loving it (that's putting it nicely) to at least feeling like it can meet the needs of all my students. Oh one more thing.....time. I think this is one of the biggest issues with the program is the time that it takes (I use to do one 30 min block for math mini lesson and centers last year, plus math during calendar time etc) and now I am doing this format which takes 60 mins.

RTI: We just had our first RTI meetings of the year so it has me thinking about RTI and wondering what other schools do for RTI. What do you do? When? What support do you have?

FREEBIE!!! Okay so I know I like freebies so I included on in this post. Hopefully you will find it useful. Click the link below for a letter word sort
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3LbAg2wnY4YWWpGSXdXRGNBTVE/edit?usp=sharing

~Erica