Monday Motivation - Managing Centres

Hey there, I'm a little late to the party, but I'm back again this week for Teacher by the Beach's link up: Monday Motivation! This week is tips and ideas on how I manage centers in my classroom.

I have two different times of day for centers: guided reading and guided math. I do a variation of Daily 5 for each. This is how I ran each of them last year and I'll talk a bit about what I plan to keep/change for next year. Again, set up will be a bit different because I'll be heading to a new classroom. :)

Guided Reading

Here is my pocket chart for organizing my guided reading centres. This was my first year implementing full-choice for which centres students went to and I absolutely LOVED it! I will definitely be doing this again next year (and doing it for math as well). I had three small tubs with the cards for first rotation, second rotation, and third rotation. Each student's picture/name card was down the side. The Guided Reading Cenre Cards are in my TpT store. I'm going to be updating them to be editable soon.

First I would put my "Read with Teacher" cards in the spots that I wanted to read with my groups (or sometimes individuals for running records). Then I would call table groups up to choose their centres. They would choose one centre from each basket. They had four choices to choose from: read to self, word work, writing, or listen to reading. I only had four iPods, so there were only four listening cards in each rotation basket. If they had a "Read with Teacher" card, they only picked two centres. If they didn't read with me that day, they got to pick three. Each day I chose a different table to pick first. 

Next year I will continue the three rotations and full choice, but I might have them just choose their centres in the morning after they have done all their unpacking and getting ready. I will also continue to have my iPods for listening, but I have five new classroom iPads, so I might make a fifth choice be iPad Word Work. 

For read to self, students took their book box and found a comfy spot around the room to read. Inside their book box they are allowed to have a max of five books from the classroom library (free choice, not levelled, based on interest) and can change these books at any time. They also have their poetry folder they can read and previous guided reading books we have done in group (at their level). I don't do "read to someone" separately, so if they would prefer to read with someone or by themselves, it doesn't matter to me. Sometimes if I have an EA or parent volunteer, I'll have them read with students too during this time.

For word work tubs, I had five different tubs with a variety of games/hands-on activities. The skills changed throughout the year: alphabet, letter sounds, CVC words, sight words, sentence writing, etc. I just changed them up when I noticed something wasn't getting chosen as much. They could choose any centre and they could switch centres when they finished one. I didn't have a lot of rules or requirements, as long as they were working and practicing their literacy skills.

For writing centres I used this tall plastic drawer unit. In the bottom drawer was their writing folder. The other drawers had different writing centres. Their folders had a "still working" pocket and "finished work" pocket, so they had to finish up their "still working" writing before they could choose a new centres. Some of the drawers stayed the same and some I changed up. I usually had sticker stories, regular story writing books, and letter templates available all year. Some other ideas I have used: doodle stories, Would You Rather? (by First and Kinder Blue Skies), comics, lists, book reviews, write the room, etc.

For listen to reading, I have a bucket of books they can choose from (I have almost 100 now... ekk! #teacherhoarder #scholasticmakesiteasy). Each book has a number on it. When I load the songs onto the iPods, I change the track title to the number and change the artist to the book title. So students grab a basket with the iPod and headphones, grab a book, and find a place to listen to their story! They just have to find the correct number track. Easy peasey! You can read more about my set up {here}. If they finished early, they just switched books. Each iPod has all of the songs on it, so anybody can listen to it. I've never had any writing/response activities with this centre; not sure if I will add this aspect in or just leave it the way it is.

I use my horseshoe table for guided reading groups. I used the rainbow drawer unit to store each group's materials. I had my Guided Reading Toolbox on top with all the tools I need for lessons. Each student brought their book box with them when we met, so they could read quietly while they waited for me to get to the table.

Guided Math

Last year I did not have students choose their math centres, I just grouped them and told them where to go. Next year I will use choice like my reading centres. Each group had a coloured shape and went to two centres a day. We only had four centres: math tubs, math work, iPod math, and work with teacher. The Guided Math Centre Cards are available in my TpT store. They will also be getting a mini update soon.

Kind of like my word work tubs, I had nine dish tubs on the cubby shelf that house different activities. Most of these were games we had played or hands-on activities with lots of manipulatives. They could choose any tub and switch at any time. 

Each student had a duotang with math work inside. I started the year off using Miss Kindergarten's Number Practice Printables, then moved on to other number work, addition/subtraction practice, etc. I really just used a bunch of different worksheets I had saved up. They worked at their own pace. Some students went through booklet after booklet, while others just did a few. I added some coloured washi tape at the top of the folder that matched each group's shape, so students could easily find their folder.

I'm really struggling with this centre next year. I want to move past using worksheets, so I might try and incorporate something with math books and writing. Or maybe use interactive notebooks. Not quite sure yet; stay posted while I work through this idea in my head. Haha!

I had some math games loaded onto my iPods, so they could play these games during iPod time. I let them use my iPad too, which had some fancier games on it ;) so that's why there is a little iPad card at the top of the pocket chart. If their group was on iPod math, the student with the iPad card got to use my iPad that day. Next year I have five iPads, so this won't be a problem.

And my horseshoe table again. I used the other drawers in the rainbow unit for my math groups. I would usually have something at the table for students to do while they waited for me to get there and begin. Some warm ideas: ten frame cards to play with, writing numbers in a blank 100 chart, Math Writing Strips (by Tara West), etc.

Well that's how things ran last year! I'm still thinking about what tweaks I'm going to do for next year. I think I'd like to have a bit more choice for math centres and less worksheets. I'll keep you posted! ;) Go check out Teacher by the Beach's link up for more ways to organize your centres. Everybody does it differently and that's ok! Find what works for you!

Daily Schedule - Morning Routine and Pack & Stack

Here is just a quick peek into how I structure the beginning and end of my school day. I keep my morning routine posted on the wall for all to see. By this point in the year, everything is pretty automatic, but it does take a lot of modeling at the beginning of the year to get the routine down pat. I don't introduce the "Question of the Day" for the first few days and home reading doesn't usually start until the second or third week of school.

The bell rings at 8:45am and students come in. Our hooks are in the hallway for this year (juniour high science labs don't have coat hooks in the room... go figure!) but it actually works out great. Less clutter in the room and I can make sure that nothing is leftover at the end of the day. The only downside is we are using plastic Command hooks and they break ALL. THE. TIME! Anywho, students take off their outside shoes/boots and leave them on the floor. They take out their agenda, home reading, and lunch kit from their backpack. Then they hang up their backpacks and jackets and come in the room.

First they hand in their agendas to this blue basket on my front counter. I check the agendas for any notes while the students are reading quietly.

Then they change their home reading book (from the colourful book boxes on the shelf) and place their home reading bag and lunch kit in their cubby (white dish tubs on the shelves). Their indoor shoes are in the cubby, so they put those on as well.

Then they go answer the "Question of the Day". I keep each month's questions on binder rings so that each day I just have to flip it to a new question! You can find my "Question of the Day" bundle {here}! The oil pan is from Amazon {here}.

Then they go grab their book boxes and read quietly at their table. I have a few students who go to morning reading as soon as they are finished getting ready (they go read leveled books with an EA). At 9:00am students who have signed up go down to the gym for a bible story and the Lord's Prayer. I supervise the rest of the students in my classroom.

When they come back, we listen to the announcements on the intercom system and then stand and sing O'Canada. Once I am ready to begin, students put their book boxes away and we meet at the carpet for calendar.

At the end of the day (about 3:25-3:30pm) we clean up whatever we were working on and go back to our tables to write in our agendas. I try to have them write something everyday, such as when book orders are due or something special thing that happened. If there is a lot of information to send home, I will just stick a label into their agenda instead. But for the most part I will write a sentence on the whiteboard and they will copy it into their agenda. Parents are expected to check the agendas everyday.

When they are done writing, they stack their chairs, come check their mailbox for any mail (that's where I leave work or notes to go home), and pack up. They get their lunch kit and home reading from their cubby, then leave their indoor shoes in the cubby for the next morning.

Then everybody goes into the hallway to get ready. My EA stays in the classroom and reads a story to the walking students that are ready (they are dismissed last) and I supervise the students getting ready in the hallway. My bus students are dismissed first, so they line up in the hallway when they are ready. The bell rings at 3:43pm for the bus students to leave. Then after the buses are all gone, by walking students get to go.

Then I usually make sure everything is tidied up, close the blinds, change my guided math/reading rotations, plug in the iPods, change the question of the day and the leader/caboose, change the daily schedule, turn off my computer, and go get Zoe from daycare! I try not to stay too late. Some days I am gone by just after 4:00pm, but others I might work for a bit. :) It's all about balance, right? I'll try to be back with the last few posts about my daily schedule this week: Theme, Author Study, and Problem Solving! In the meantime, click the picture below to check out the other posts in my daily schedule series!

Easy Daysies! {Giveaway}

I was very excited when Creative Teaching Press contacted me to review one of their new products. I love trying out new things and when I found out these were created by a fellow teacher & mom, I got very excited! We all know that things created by teachers (hello TpT!) are the best, because who knows what works in the classroom better than ourselves?? I also love that they featured this product on Dragon's Den (Canada's version of Shark Tank). You can check out videos of this {here}.

Creative Teaching Press sent me the Every Day Starter Kit and two Classroom Management packs.

Now, I don't have kids to test out the Every Day Starter Kit (the one in my tummy is a WEE BIT too small for chores and making the bed.... hehe) but I can see how wonderful of a product it is! This is definitely a great tool for children who love routine and always want to know what's happening next. On the right side of the magnetic board you line up the daily events/chores. Then when your child completes the tasks, they can move the magnet over to the left side of the board to show that it's done! There are lots of magnets to choose from and you can also get additional add-on packs for special after school activities or family events. I think this would be a big hit with the kids!

Creative Teaching Press also sent me the Classroom Management Tools for "Pre K & K" and "Grade 1 & Up". I absolutely loved these magnetic cards! They are quite large and a very heavy duty magnetic material! These will definitely last through many years of wear and tear. The font is very simple for students to read and the images are bright and cute. They are easy to move around to change your daily schedule and you can easily write the times beside the cards. I love that they don't take up much space... just the edge of my white board that I don't use much anyways!

Tons of different options for every subject area. Plus it comes with a few blank cards to add in your own!

Now for the giveaway! If you are interested in trying out your own Every Day Starter Kit set, Creative Teaching Press has graciously offered one of my followers their very own pack. In order to win, please use the Rafflecopter to follow Creative Teaching Press on Facebook and Pinterest. The contest closes Friday at midnight (central time). Enjoy the rest of your week!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Late or Early... Five (Plus One) for Friday {Freebies}

I can't decide if I'm really late for last weeks link up, or really early for this Friday. Either way I've got five (plus one) randoms for you. It's the Five for Friday link up over at Doodle Bugs Teaching. Click the picture to check out everyone else's five things as well!

1. Check out our spring bulletin boards. We wrote some five senses spring poems, then practiced our typing skills using Max's Toolbox (kid version of Microsoft Office... have you tried it before?? Love it!). On our spring math bulletin board we made some Easter subtraction craftd (inspired by Kinder by Kim's Jazzy Journals). We also completed Miss Kindergarten's Math Flowers. They turned out so cute!

Here is our rough copy of our spring senses poem. We wrote them in pencil first, then typed them and added clipart. I skimped on the colour printing though. Oh well! Click the pic to download your own copy.

2. We have been doing a mini plant unit last week and this week. We labelled parts of the plants, completed the life cycle, talked about needs, and graphed our favourite type of plant (a la The First Grade Parade). We also made our own grassheads! They were super fun and pretty easy to make! Just get your boyfriend to make a pit stop at the Dollar Store to pick you up 8 sets of beige panty hose and you are ready to go! :) We just stretched the panty hose over a plastic container, put a spoonful of grass seeds into it, and then filled it with potting soil. Tie a knot at the base of the head. Use a tiny elastic to make a nose (some chose not to). Hot glue wiggle eyes and a pipecleaner mouth and/or mustache. Decorate the styrofoam cup. Last, water them! We put water inside the cups and I also let them squirt the tops with spray bottles eveyr morning. I was a little worried these guys wouldn't grow because I have no green thumb or fingers at all, but we saw a few little sprouts here and there this morning. Success! :)

Every morning I have my students take out their observation journal, draw a picture of their grasshead, and write a sentence about how it is growing. You can download the journal by clicking the picture below.

Download old version here.

Download new version here.

3. Last week Thursday was our Open House. It's pretty low-key. Usually we just display artwork created by the students when our "Artist in the School" visits, but ours had to cancel due to a family emergency, so we had to change things up this year. Our principal wanted us to demonstrate how we use technology in our classroom, so I had my Mimio and document camera set up. Students could show their parents how we use the document camera and then they could show our calendar routine (complete with fancy calendar video menu). Parents were pretty amazed at some of the high tech things we now have! We also put out our autobiographies that we finally finished! They turned out really good and I am pretty impressed with some of their writing.

4. I got some sweet comments on my Weekly Plans from last week. I have to confess, my plans don't look like that all the time. I just tried it out so I could link up with Deedee! This is what my actual day planner looks like. I like having the whole week spread over two pages. This works pretty well for me.

5. Here are my students enjoying some fun Daily 5 time! I had to snap that sweet shot of my two boys listening to the same book. They were really engaged in the story. I have about 60 different "Listen to Reading" books right now. I just picked up a few more from SuperStore this week. They were Disney stories--Wreck It Ralph, Phineas & Ferb, Tinkerbell, and Tangled. They were only 5 bucks each and the kids love them! The other picture is a student completing a newly added word work centre. This is a Beginning Sound MP3 Match from K is for Kinderiffic. They loved it!

 

So I did it today. I counted how many days left. 46! Eek! The snow is finally starting to melt a bit, so the kids are feeling a bit wrangly. I don't blame them. I just want to go sit outside in the sun too! Today I felt that the blurting out was becoming a big problem again so I decided to bring out the Whole Brain Teaching scoreboard idea again. I used to do Students vs. Teacher so that everytime a student blurted I would get a tally and everytime someone raised their hand or waited their turn, the students would get a tally. This worked fine except I would get the students that just raised their hand to get more tallies! "My tooth is loose." "My fish died yesterday." "I think blue is my favourite colour." Ugh! I don't care! Anyways, I decided to change things up a bit and change it to Boys vs. Girls! They ate it up! If a boy blurts, the girls get a tally. If a girl blurts, the boys get a tally. Sweet! The reward? Whoever has the most tally marks by last recess gets TWO EXTRA MINUTES OF RECESS!! Hahah. Really I just let them get dressed first and go outside a tiny bit earlier. Easy peasy! It worked like a charm! The girls won today. We'll see if the boys can make it tomorrow! :) Click the picture to download your own Boys vs. Girls Scoreboard and give it a try!

Enjoy your week peeps!

Hall Pass!

This has been the shortest. week. EVER! Monday--holiday, no school. Tuesday--snow day, no school!! Wednesday & Thursday--regular classes. Friday-P.D. Day, no kids! Pretty sweet. I will take it!

So I am linking up with Reagan's fun linky party Hall Pass!

I'm loving my new word work centres that I've been putting out each month, but I think for my favourite product I am going to choose my guided reading cards. I use these on a daily basis for our Daily 5 time. I've switched things up a few times since the start of the year, due to different pull outs and , but the cards have been helpful. Instead of writing my students names on the group cards included in my pack, I put each student's name on a coloured sticky. This makes it easy to move centre groups around and still know which kids are in which reading group. Works great for me!

My favourite area in my classroom is the cozy little library. I moved some furniture around last week, so our library got a bit cozier. It's a little nook now. This layout helps keep the shelves in the same spot though. Before they would get rolled around and pushed back and I was always straightening them at the end of the day! This layout  works a lot better!

I use the "Class? Yes!" signal to get my students attention this year. It works great because my kids are so yappy that they love repeat what I'm saying, especially if I use a silly or high-pitch voice. During working time, if things are getting too loud I ring this little bell on my desk and whisper "Quiet Bell". If I have to ring the bell three times in a certain period of time, we have five SILENT minutes. I've only had to do this a couple of times. After the first bell we usually get pretty quiet. (<-- quiet bell was an awesome tip from Teacher Tipster)

Some cuddles with my puppies, a phone call with my mom or my aunty or both, a diet Dr. Pepper, and maybe some chocolate...  You gotta have someone to vent to! My teaching partner is awesome because our classes are both super weak so we understand each other's frustrations. But I also have my mom who teaches a grade 3/4 class and my aunty (who is my best friend) who teaches juniour high French and music. They totally "get it". :)


Well, that was fun! Thanks for sticking around! I forgot to blog about a new freebie I posted on TpT, so here it is. Just a quick and easy math centre: Hundred Chart Fill Ins! There are 10 different charts. You can laminate them or stick them in a plastic page protector so students can use dry erase markers to fill in the missing numbers. There are different patterns, like counting by 3s and 5s, even and odd, or random numbers. Good for differentiation as well! Click the picture below to check them out!

Five for Friday!

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for her Five for Friday linky party. I get to choose five random happenings from this week and blog about it! This is perfect for me because I'm feeling pretty random this week anyway! Click the picture below to check out the other fabulous blogs involed in this week's linky...

1. Our first two weeks back were all about winter, hibernation, and bears! Here is our partially completed bear chart. I think we'll do some bear art and writing next week, instead of starting our penguin unit right away! Although I can't wait to read Tacky! He is my favourite little penguin. I just bought "Tacky Goes to Camp".... It was the only one I didn't have yet! Oh, and did you hear there's a new one coming out?? "Happy Birdday, Tacky!" will be released May 14, 2013! Fun!

2. My class is finally starting to settle down behaviour wise, but the biggest problem I am having is blurting out! They are all in the "I-am-the-most-important-person-in-the-room-and-I-have-something-important-to-say-so-I'll-just-blurt-it-out" stage. No matter how much discussion and modelling and practicing we did, they just kept blurting out! So I brought out my whole brain teaching scoreboard from First Grade Fever (I used this for Class? Yes! at the beginning of the year) for a week long friendly competition. We wrote the goal in the middle and I started giving the kids a tally mark for each (yes, each!) time a hand was raised properly. Each time someone blurted, I got a tally mark. The first day I would reinforce why I was giving myself a tally or praising someone for raising their hand, but by the second day I would just silently write the tally on whichever side. It was AMAZING! It worked so well. Then today at the end of the day we counted all the tallies by 5 (hello math practice!) and saw that the students had won so we played a little game to celebrate! Next week we are going to focus on a different skill (maybe coming to the carpet quickly and quietly).

3. I've got my Winter Math Stations all set up. The kids really enjoy them! They are sad if I skip them to do a whole group lesson! :)

4. We are practicing our tens partners in addition right now, so we played this easy card game. It is an individual game and the kids really enjoyed it!! All you need is a deck of cards from ace to ten. Students place nine cards face up in a 3x3 grid and keep the other cards in a stack. Students look to see if they have two cards that are tens partners (A-9, 2-8, etc.) and remove those cards and place them in a pairs pile. Then they replace those two cards with two new cards from the stack. The goal is to get all the cards partnered up and removed. If there is a ten, they get to just remove it by itself! I have also seen some people use kings as zeros though, so 10 and 0 (king) would be tens partners. I thought this might be confusing for my guys though, so I just left the ten by itself.

5. In Writer's Workshop we are working on writing personal narratives with a beginning, middle, and end. I read the story "My Trip to the Hospital" by Mercer Mayer and we practiced retelling the story in beginning/middle/end format. Then we orally told stories about a time we got hurt. Finally we wrote our stories out. They turned out pretty cute. We made our good copies into large bandaids. I forgot to give them a real bandaid to stick onto the cover! We'll do that on Monday! :)

That's it for tonight! I need some cuddle time with my puppies before bed. Good night, all!