Monday Made It & a FREEBIE!!!

I'm finally doing it, I'm linking up with 4th Grade Frolics for Monday Made It...I think I've only done this once before. I wanted to post this particular Monday Made It last week but I forgot...sorry...I remembered on Tuesday.

Stay tuned to the end of this post for a freebie!!!

This summer I'm working a summer camp, with students from 5 to 13 years old. I know, I know! It's pure insanity. The first 2 days were a nightmare...as you can imagine. Pure chaos! Even though my boss had the best of intentions with her format, it just wasn't working, not with majority boys & the personalities they brought with them. So by day 3 I was like, we need to do centers for the morning academic portion. {We're trying to prevent too much "Summer Slide" from happening} I wanted to make sure that the kids touched upon reading, writing & math with some easy stuff & interesting (at least to them) mixed in. Here are the centers that we have

• Read to Self
• Reading response
• Drawing
• Writing/Picture Prompt
• Math Facts
• Word Games
• Online Math
• Reading Online (which translates to Reading Eggs) 

I'll post another day about what each of these centers looks like, but today's post is about how I organized who went where when! This is what I came up with:

There are 8 centers, so the most groups I have on any given day are 8. Depending on how many groups we have, decides how many centers we do that day. If I don't keep it even like that then I just get myself all confused. These are just printed on regular paper & put inside page protectors so I could write the student's names for each group with dry erase marker & erase for the next day.

On this particular day we had 7 groups, so the students only did 7 rotations, with a break for snack in the middle.

Everything is held on with the sticky putty stuff, sorry I don't know what the technical teacher term for it is, but I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.

Below are close ups of the center labels & the time labels.

My time & center labels I just printed on yellow & orange card stock, then laminated with my Scotch laminator (another reason why it's so wonderful to have a personal laminator at home). Then I color coded each group, no I did not intentionally make them striped. That happened because my printer is running out of ink. Then I laminated the group cards with my personal laminator. 

It's nothing fancy folks & I don't even know if this is the exact set-up that I would use in my own classroom (most likely not), but it works for summer camp & I thought I would share it. Maybe it'll inspire you to come up with a version that works best for your class. It does let me at least get a visual of how I could potentially set up my rotations.

Now onto the freebie I promised you.

I have 99 likes on my Facebook Page so to celebrate the close proximity to 100 I have set-up my fan freebie page. Thanks so much to Ideas by Jivey and Ms. Fultz's Corner for their blog posts & video tutorials, I was able to set it up easy peasey!!! As some of you may know I've been working on a polka dot classroom decor pack & am slowly moving through it, but in the mean time I've added an item from my pack to my fan freebie page. I just wanted to thank those of you who have liked me on Facebook, just another way for us all to stay connected & share our fabulous ideas!!!

I can't wait to see what everyone has made for Monday Made It & I hope you'll check out my Fan Freebie!!!

Thursday Raves & A Few of my Favorite Things - 2 LINKY Parties

To avoid the blogging faux pas of posting multiple times in one day, I have to piggy back my posts into one post. On Thursday's I host my Thursday Raves Linky (which is still fledgling), but I also wanted to link up with Across the Hall in 2nd Grade for These are a few of my Favorite things summer linky. So first I will post about my "Morning Must Haves" for this weeks favorites, then keep on scrolling for my Thursday Raves and I hope you'll link up with me and with Across the Hall in 2nd Grade.

This weeks topic is Morning Must Haves and here are 3 of mine:

1. The morning news & it HAS to be Action News. I don't usually sit down & watch it, but I like to listen to it while I'm getting ready. 
2. Chocolate milk....I know, I know, I know. The drink of 5 year olds everywhere. My love of chocolate milk I think is hereditary, because my dad loves it too & now my son does. I don't like "hot" drinks, like coffee or tea (neither does my dad...are you starting to see a trend?) 
3. The snooze button. Having an alarm clock without that button is NOT an option. If I don't hit the snooze & just turn the alarm off, guess who is getting to work late? This girl!!! But I also have a really hard time getting out of bed the first time the alarm goes off, so I need the snooze, but then I usually hit it at least twice. It's an evil luxury.

Can't wait to see what your morning must haves are.

 Now for this Thursday's RAVE...

This week I'm raving about the program Evernote. (I am in no way affiliated with them, this rave is based on my personal experience) I actually found out about this from a fellow blogging buddy, but I'm sorry I can't remember who it was right now. If it was you please let me know & I'll give you credit for it. 

Are you like me with lists everywhere? I started keeping a little notebook in my purse this year to write down the things I needed to do, then I would go home and write a grocery list, then I would jot down a quick list at school of supplies/materials I needed. And what did I always end up doing with those lists? FORGETTING THEM! It never failed...if I was going to the grocery store I forgot the list. Or I would get to school the next day, walk into to my room, & go "Oh bumpers!" (sorry a line from Chuggington, my son is obsessed with trains) because I just remembered that I needed to create something the night before or grab something from home for a lesson. If this sounds like you, have no fear the solution is here!

EVERNOTE

It's a free program, unless you choose to upgrade to the premium subscription, that you download onto your computer, your phone, and/or iPad. The beautiful part your list(s) are always with you no matter where you go. If your like me & many others in this age of technology, your phone is always with you, so having the app on my phone is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!!

Here's the screen shot from my phone.

And here's the screen shot from my computer.

No matter what device you use, the information you entered syncs up with all of your other devices. For instance if you make a list on your computer, you can hit the sync button yourself or it will automatically sync after a certain amount of time (sorry I forget what that is right now, because I just hit the sync button after I update/create something), then when you open the app on your phone, voila, there's your list. 

You can even take a picture of something & add that to your list or a reminder. I don't know if you can see it that well, but in the picture of the screen shot from my phone. There's a picture on my Tpt create list. I found an organizer that I hastily threw together in my room & wanted to make a more polished version of it, so I took a picture of it, then uploaded it to my Evernote list as a reminder of the general look.

Evernote has changed my life, I love it and am so glad I heard about it. Make sure to check out it for yourself and to help get your organization on.

I can't wait to see what you have to rave about. Link up below.

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Next School Year I'm Going to...(LINKY)

As the school year comes to a close for some & winds down for many it is that time of year when teacher's reflect on what did and didn't work this year, what new ideas they discovered that they would like to try, etc. In honor of those reflections I'm linking up with Kim at Joy in 6th Grade for her "Next school year, I am DEFINITELY going to..." linky. And bonus by linking up you could win a $25 Tpt Gift certificate.

 I have 4 things that I am definitely going to do next year & here they are in no certain order.

I came across Whole Brain Teaching (WBT) from this video of Ms. Freundlich doing a math lesson,  on Pinterest & I was immediately drawn in. From there I started researching WBT & found so many amazing Youtube videos, like this one of Ms. Farrah Shipley introducing WBT & the rules to her students or this one of her teaching her students about fractions. The level of engagement that these students experienced during the lesson amazed me. There were no glazed over eyes to be found, as the students sat there & listened to their teacher drone on. I know in times of student centered learning, workshop approaches, etc. there shouldn't be much of that left, but you'd be surprised. So even though I teach Basic Skills and only see my small group of students for 30 minutes a day, I'm still going to give this a try, which might be the best method for students who are in need of the extra reinforcement.

 I was fortunate this year that my school purchased a subscription to Reading A-Z to provide some of the teacher's like myself, Basic Skills and Specialists, with a leveled reader database. First, let me say that I love Reading A-Z. (Maybe more about that in a Thursday Rave ;) ) Now onto the organization part. Currently all of the books that I've printed and made student copies of are piled into a basket on my window ledge, as I have no place to store them & they are a wide range of levels, since I pull 1st and 2nd grade students during the day for Reading, I just didn't know what to do with them. That was until I read a post from this linky from Mrs. H over at Mrs. H's Resource Room about a method she found on Pinterest. 

Click on the picture to read about how Miss French from Wicked Fun in First Grade organized her Reading A-Z books. I absolutely love this idea, but my OCD would probably have me laminating ALL of the pages instead of just the covers. Boy would that be time consuming. So I need to give a big THANK YOU to Mrs. H for posting about this or I never would of found it.

In my quest to  help my struggling reader's I obviously need to find a different method of approaching the material, if it's not sinking in in the classroom, than I need to attack it a different way. My school is starting to head in the workshop direction. Well administration would like it to go that way, so it is still in the very early stages of coming to fruition. I have been reading about both and have implemented Writers' Workshop in my Kindergarten class, when I taught K a few years ago. I'm hoping between WBT & the workshop approach it will be the method that will reach my kiddos.

Being a Basic Skills teacher I not only pull small groups of students for Reading, but also for Math. At the beginning of the year I had my students working in centers, but as my group re-sized and changed over the months I slowly did away with them, because the numbers shrunk down. However, I really like this approach, just like for Reading and Writing, so I'm still working out in my head how this looks and feels for me. Unfortunately, there's not as much written on this subject as there is for Readers' and Writers' Workshop. 

Remember to join up with Kim and let us know what you will be doing differently next school year. The linky closes Sunday....What are you waiting for? Start reflecting and get to typing!!!