I am not dead!

Wow, it has been crazy the last three week. I went from having walking pneumonia to Lil' Man having a double ear infection, to Sissy being rushed to the ER having trouble breathing, to my husband spending 3 days in the hospital with chest pains. Then after all that things were getting back to normal, and I got my new small group table! Yay! That meant some furniture rearranging in my room. Then my iPad died. Died! Except it really didn't die. I could still hear it ding when I would get an email. And Lil' Man was trying to play his game on it and touched the screen, caused another game to start, we could hear the music for it. So the iPad worked you just can't see it!! So it will be away for two weeks getting fixed. :( I could have taken it to the apple store but then they wouldn't redo my engraving. My iPad was a Mother's Day gift and my husband has "Mommy's Apple" put on the back of it. I can't give that up. So I am back to using my husband's laptop!

Anyway, this past week my table came and I got evaluated. I am really liking my small group area now, and I used the small table I was using for small group to put my computers on. Before they were on a massive table and the kids had to use big huge chairs to use them, their feet didn't even touch the ground! My evaluation went well. She watched my reading, whole group and small group. I have my meeting on it next week, but she commented on my organization and differentiation. So that brings me to my question for today.

Do you differentiate for every group every day? I do, but I was asked that question a couple of times this week, by some who do and some who don't. So blog land what's your take on it!!!!

I will leave you with before and after small group pictures!!

Before of computer table. Notice how tall it is and the
big chairs they had to use!

This is from an old post but you can see my small group area before in the middle picture and top right corner!

New computer table. Fits my three working computers perfectly and uses little chairs!!

My new small group table and area!! I love it!!















One last thing. Don't forget the TN blogger meet up. I am so excited for the trip!! Hope to see you there.
                                           

Using Portaportal

I was frequently being asked by parents what are some good games my kids could play at home on the computer or what game did  they play in the computer center today, it's all they talked about. I thought social bookmarking has to help me with this in some way. So last year I started a portaportal account. I created 20 folders and numbered them 1-20. This is important because each child in my class has a number. After our beginning of the year screening I placed games in each folder based on what the child needed to work on. Some of the different types of games included things on letters, numbers, colors, and shapes. Some of the kids had 1 game and some had 4 or 5 at that time. Then each week after our assessment I would add games as needed (I never removed games, because they loved the games in their folder and would continue to play them even after a skill was mastered). I also made my portaportal account my homepage on my center computers and the students knew to play games in their folder during center time! I have been working to get my portaportal account up and running this year and I thought I would share with blogland. We did not screen our students at the beginning this year, so it has taken me a little longer. I had to wait on our baseline test in reading and placement test in math. I just got started this weekend so the folders are still a little empty but I think you can see how it works. I gave everyone a link to a color game and starfall letters. I am working on deciding who needs what in math and will put those games into folders later. So that I don't lose games I keep a word document of all the games I find organized by topic. I didn't do this last year and when I cleaned out my folders I lost a lot of games, lesson learned! Below you will find a link to my portaportal account the way the students access it, and a link to my website document, which as I said is a work in progress.

Portaportal

Website Document