Beginning of the Year Math Assessments At the beginning of the year, it’s always incredibly important to get to know your students as readers and mathematicians. Having the right beginning of the year math assessments is crucial! I always found it was much easier to get to know my students’ reading ability because we always had Fountas & Pinnell or… Read More
Guided Math: Getting Started
How to Launch Guided Math During The First Weeks of School Gone are the days of teaching math ONLY through whole group instruction! If you’ve stumbled upon this blog post, you can transition to guided math right now, too! I don’t care what month in the school year it is! When you implement guided math, you spend the bulk of… Read More
Exploring Math Manipulatives
At the beginning of the year, it’s so important to set up procedures and expectations for everything, but ESPECIALLY when it comes to your math centers. That’s why I let my students spend time exploring math manipulatives! In order to have successful math rotations, students must know how to complete math centers independently. How to Explore Math Manipulatives One of… Read More
Setting Up Your Reading Centers
Have you ever been to a professional development where you left and felt like you had 1,000 things to do? It’s can be so stressful figuring out how to get your reading centers and literacy stations ready! Recently I spent some time working with a few teachers on setting up their classrooms for small group centers & rotations, and I… Read More
Organizing Math & Reading Rotations for Small Group Instruction
After seven years of teaching, I finally found the best way to organize my small group rotations. I’m going to share with you how I organize my rotations. Keep in mind this is what worked for my students and my classroom – you might adapt or change these ideas as you see fit! You can ask/share how other teachers organize… Read More
Strategies to Reduce Small Group Interruptions
Every year during back to school time I start to get a teensy bit nervous about all of the new little faces that will be coming and how all of their little personalities will play a part in our class family. And oh good gracious, I always stress about how in the world I’m going to make sure I’ve got my routines… Read More