Centers

This last week was a 3 day week so I thought it would be a good week to start centers (that and it took me that long to teach each center and it just so happened to fall this way!).  I am doing my centers differently this year and it seems like it is really going to work. I have 5 center groups, three to four students in each. Every day they have a "Must Do" center, which comes from our reading series and usually takes about 15 minutes, there are four of those tubs. Then one group meets with me for about 15 minutes. After they complete the "Must Do" center they can go to one of their two "Choose To" centers. I have 10 of those 2 for each group. They include reading, writing, art, listening, Smart Board, Hot Dots, Leap Frog, pattern blocks, word work and computers. I have most of them pictured below. We were missing Leap Frog because no one was using it while I was taking pictures!

Reading Center
(you can see a part of the Listening Center on the left)

Computer Center (using their portaportal folders)



Hot Dots Center



Pattern Blocks Center



SMART Board Center



Word Work Center

Writing Center

Art Center

 I wish I had a picture of the center chart, but I keep forgetting to take one. On one side I have center group signs, these have a number in the middle with their names and pictures surrounding it. On the other side I have the actual chart. It is three columns Groups, Must Do, and Choose To. They read straight across from their group number to see what color tub they do and then to see what Choose To centers they have. The biggest problem we have had is reading the chart, but on day 2 that got better and even better on day 3. I like to meet with more than one group a day, but for now I am only pulling the one group that gets me as a Must Do, and then I am monitoring the Choose To groups. I just make sure they have gone to one of their two choices and not somewhere else and make sure they understand the center. Once I am sure they completely understand the center I will pull students during choice time. I have my groups put together based on reading level and so we work on reading strategies and high frequency words. When I pull during choice time I pull for other things, such as to work on specific skills, or more focused phonics lessons. The students in these groups may come from several center groups, or it may even be an individual conferences. I am fortunate to have a full time assistant (which are disappearing and will soon be nothing more than a back when story!) and so she walks the room during Must Do time and helps them when they don't understand the buckets, then she helps get the Choose To centers setup and running. On Friday she was pulled to do sign in for our Grandparents Day program, so the kids had to function without her. I was scared!!! but they did great. It really shows that taking two weeks to teach the centers really payed off. The way we did that was splitting the class in half. I took half for 15 minutes and taught one choice center and my assistant took the other half and taught another center. Essentially we taught two centers a day for five days. We had one day in the beginning talking about basic center rules, such as stay with your center group- no aimless wondering!, use quiet voices in the center, rules for going into and out of the loft, and cleaning up after yourself. We basically repeated that lesson after teaching all the centers, so we had two days of basic center rules total. Then we took three days of doing nothing but choice centers, their were no Must Do tubs and no small groups. My assistant and I did nothing more than help them understand the chart and make sure all the centers were functioning properly. My assistant calls it organized chaos. The teacher she was previously with had 4 "centers". One with her, one with the assistant (completing a worksheet), and two completing reading series centers like my Must Do tubs. The kids never left their seats. They rotated through all four centers each day.  I guess I just like having one stable group each day, but then having the flexibility to do other groups as needed. To each their own! I think my assistant really likes the changes I made, she is doing a lot more fun things with the kids than a worksheet. 

I hoped to link my center chart signs and my center lesson plan I use during the two week introduction for each center, but google docs is not functioning correctly ARRGGG!!! If you want to see them I will be happy to try again in a later post.

How do you do centers?

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

Tree of Choice

This one goes along with my behavior management plan. This is the tree of choice we use beside it (out of the picture) is a basket with the purple apples they can earn and where they put their other apples when they make a bad choice. So far letting them earn back apples is going well. I have a couple that don't really try to earn them back but we just did treasure box for the first time on Thursday and they realized that because they had a yellow apple that they didn't work to earn back they didn't get to do treasure box. I am going to have to work on my treasure box though. The teacher before me left four boxes  full of stuff, but when we got into it on Thursday we quickly realized it is mostly boy toys. When I was in Kindergarten I would have loved it, but in a class of 11 girls most of which are very "girly" I need some more girl things!

Classroom Updates

Okay so when I started doing this blog a few weeks ago I didn't realize how difficult it would be to blog after going back to work with a 16 month old and being 6 months pregnant. Boy am I tired! Last week was our first week back, teachers only no kids. Last night was our open house/tailgate party. Only Kindergarten knew who their teacher was so we work hard to keep it a secret until the party. It was like nothing I have ever experienced before at a school, but it was so much fun!

Anyway I think the room is about ready for Wednesday (that's when Kindergarten starts). I have a little bit more to do Monday and Tuesday between conferences. We meet with each parent for around 30 minutes to go over what Kindergarten is. I have a few pictures to share this weekend, but plan to take a lot more Monday and will try to post then.

The above picture is the shelf before. A piece of plywood was added to give it a back. Then I recruited some help from my dad and he painted the plywood with magnetic primer, then covered it with a blue paint.

And the result was a magnetic back on a bookshelf. This will be great for using magnetic letters to spell word wall words. This area is where my word work center will meet (I plan to post about my centers later this week). My word wall is just to the left of this area and on the right is another bookshelf where my magnetic letters are stored. If you use the magnetic primer I have a few recommendations.
1. Have them check it where ever you buy it. It is not a popular item and tends to sit on the shelf for a while and it can go bad! I had to return my first can and get a second.
2. Make sure where you get it at shakes the can really really well, again ask them to check it before you leave. The metal flakes in it sink to the bottom making it difficult to use.
3. It stinks, so it at all possible use it outside. At the very least in a well ventilated room.

It only took us one day because the primer dries in 30 minutes. So we did 3 coats of primer and then one really thick coat of blue paint. Let it dry outside for about an hour and then brought it into the hallway where it dried for a day in half (we did it on Saturday and came back on Monday). Monday morning it was ready to go back in my room and worked great!

More to come this week.....
I have pictures of my new "tree of choice" and plan to write up my new center management plan, with some pictures of the chart.

Behavior Management

The Lesson Plan Diva is having a Linky Party on Behavior Management! So I thought I would share mine. I am doing the same sort of thing this year as last but with a few changes. Last year I did apple bites. The students started the day with a whole apple and could lose bites for behavior problems. I did allow them to earn the bites back during the day for making better choices (this was dependent on why they lost the bite). This year I have a tree in my room so I made whole apples in 4 colors. Every student will start the day on green. They can lose the green and  go to a yellow, then to red. Similar to the stop light system. I would rather focus on the positive then the negative so I have a fourth color, purple. Students don't start the day with purple, but they can earn it. This way if I see a student starting to go the wrong way I can find someone doing a great job and ask them to get a purple apple. Hopefully this will encourage the others to do the right thing. I have a sheet I send home each day with a face marked on it, either happy, straight, or sad. This year if a student has a purple apple I will give them a sticker in this space instead of a stamp. I also have a place for comments on why they received that face, and a place for parents to sign so I know they see them.

Here is a link to the Behavior Sheet I use:
Behavior Sheet

Be sure to find other great ideas at the Linky Party

Just a moment I had to share!

I had to take my son with me to work in my room yesterday. I snapped this picture of him "helping". Who says there is no napping in Kindergarten!

Paint Sticks

While exploring the internet a few weeks ago I came across an idea on Kelly's Kindergarten for using paint sticks to make name plates for the children. I had planned on using this idea when another one came to me. I sort my classroom books by themes for reading stories, math topics, holidays, and so forth. I was using pieces of long thin pieces of paper. I made a list of my all my themes, counted them and headed down to Home Depot. They were kind enough to give me 75 paint sticks for free (without any paint). I wrote each theme on the front and back of the sticks and slid them between my books instead of those papers. My thinking behind this is that the wooden sticks will last longs and stick out from between books better than paper. In the pictures you will see a few of my sticks written on front and back, and the sticks in use on the top shelf with my old paper dividers on the lower shelf. I still have several paint sticks left so I am considering the name plate idea, but if any one can think of another use for them I would love to hear it.