Back to School Organization #1 - Centers

Classroom centers are an important part of self directed learning and exploring new ideas. Centers range from classroom areas to various curriculum activities to a multitude of rotations where everyone gets a turn to learn. And, as you continue to teach throughout the many years, you’ll collect lots of center “stuff.” With so many variables, it’s sometimes hard to remember what centers you’ve even set up throughout the year!

Therefore, it’s important to establish a way to organize your centers. Following are some ideas I use in my classroom.

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First, I organize my closet space by curricular areas. These pictures are just samples to help you get started. I also organize science and social studies this way.

    

Next, I organize all the activities and games I have for each of these areas. For example, the pictures below (sight word activity centers) are activities I have lined up on the shelf labeled Word Work & Phonics.




The next set of pictures are activities I have organized in my math cabinet shelves. These resources are placed on the shelf labeled Geometry Activities. (Tip: I organize my math shelves by the Common Core Standards)



Finally, I took pictures of EVERYTHING I use in my centers and placed the pictures in a 4X6 filing box with the same labels as my cabinets.

Now I can easily reference all of my center activities and games in one handy 4 by 6 filing box by the 4 main areas in Language Arts and the Math Common Core Standards right from my teacher’s table. And, it’s portable for those times when I need to take it with me and plan my lessons at home or elsewhere.
In addition, I never use the same center game over and over again when I have so many to choose from. And, when I need to rotate the same activity back in the mix, it’s easier to make it more challenging the second time around. The kids never get bored and learning continues to spiral in new ways.

How do you organize your centers and stations?

Terena

Back to School Organization Tips

Over the next few weeks as we all get ready to go back to school, I will be sharing several organizational tips. If you’re a new teacher looking for a few ideas, a seasoned teacher needing a little spark, or maybe some of these ideas just slipped your mind… there’s a little bit for everyone.

So, stay tuned during the remainder of July for helpful organizational tips.

Terena

Throw Back Thursday

Our classroom puppet theater has always been one of the most popular stations every week of the year! My students always become better story tellers and increase their comprehension. Your students will love it too.
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With the pressure of standards and testing data, it seems teachers often times have a hard time letting go and allowing kids to explore and discover new learning through play. Understandable as sometimes we feel administrators might not understand the process behind our instructional strategies and expect to see a purely academic focus. However, it is so important for our students to have lots of language experience.
If you’re not sure where to begin, try using puppets and a puppet theatre. It’s easy to make and incorporate into your teaching if you’re just now starting out or even if you’re an experienced teacher.

COST $0

A puppet theatre doesn’t need to be expensive. I picked this tri-fold up from the school supply room, used a razor blade to cut out an opening, and colored it using markers and crayons! The kids love it.
While raising the level of interaction in group activities is important, some stronger results are most frequently seen from informal interactions between teachers and children, showing the importance of elevated language experiences during times such as directed play.
It only takes one short whole group lesson to demonstrate how to use your puppet theatre. Then, spend the next day during your language arts block of time calling small groups to participate retelling the story you read when you first broke it out during your whole group lesson. Engage your students in conversations and retellings that enrich their language using puppets or paper puppets laminated and hot glued onto tongue depressors. Finally, allow them to use this often for a richer language experience.

The Gingerbread Boy is a terrific beginning book. It has a repeating storyline that children are sure to remember along with an emotional ending they never forget!
If you give your kiddos the proper modeling and direct instruction how to retell a story, collaborate with each other in small groups, and interact with engaging stories, your students and their language ability will start to improve dramatically. And as a plus, you will be teaching the required standards and they will be mastering them through play.
Standards Addressed

L.K.6
Use words & phrases acquired through conversations, reading & being read to, & responding to texts.
SL.K.1.
Participate in collaborative conversations within diverse partners about kindergarten topics & texts with peers in small & large groups.
RL.K.2.
With prompting & support, retell familiar stories, including key details.
RL.K.10
Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose & understanding.

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My Big Campus

My Big Campus is a web-based social learning network developed for K-12 school districts. Designed with built-in safety features, the service provides a monitored and secure means of providing social media tools in classrooms.

The platform has a Facebook-like user interface, making it recognizable to students and teachers. This familiarity aids in classroom use and encourages collaboration. My Big Campus is specifically designed for K12 education and includes digital classroom tools allowing educators to create and post assignments, build calendars, and utilize assessment tools for quizzes and polls. Students use My Big Campus to collaborate, share resources, and manage their class schedule and assignments.
The My Big Campus Educational Resource Library is a collection of online resources shared among My Big Campus users. The resource library is pre-embedded with educational videos, wikis, documents, and websites; and teachers can add to the library as they come across educational resources online. Educational videos on YouTube can also be entered in the resource library, but the additional links and peripheral images and ads commonly found with YouTube videos are stripped away. In other words, if you have a My Big Campus account, you can login at home to download YouTube videos you cannot view at school. What a great alternative to see those awesome YouTube learning videos that our school servers often nix.
My Big Campus also has a mobile device app for iOS and Android. Check it out at your Google Play store or at the Apple app store.

I hope you found this helpful!

Terena