April topic: SCHEDULES
I honestly have a love/hate relationship with schedules. (Probably because I'm always running behind. Yes... I'm that teacher) Schedules and routines are an extremely important part of our day. The kids thrive on routines and it keeps me from pulling my hair out. Here is where the hate part of my relationship with schedules come in.... I tend to become side tracked and dig deeper on certain topics with my kiddos and lose track of time. I've learned that I have to set my timer on my phone to keep me on time. Here's what my classroom schedule looks like:
7:55 to 8:15 - Breakfast in the classroom and Binder Time
8:15 to 9:00 Greeting, Morning Message, Daily Dish, Calendar, and Music & Movement
9:00 to 11:25 ELAR, Writing, Literacy Stations, and alternate Social Studies and Science during this time
11:25 to 12:10 Conference
12:10 to 12:35 Read Aloud
12:35 to 1:20 Lunch and Recess
1:20 to 2:40 Math
2:40 to 3:05 RTI
3:05 to 3:10 Clean Up
3:10 Dismissal
Binder Time: Throughout the year, we have added numerous pages to our binders. This a time for my kiddos to practice their letters, cvc words, high frequency words, numbers, addition, subtraction, etc... It's a great review time. Currently, our favorite binder page is HeidiSongs' Loose Tooth Subtraction.
Daily Dish: I came across this idea from Cara Carroll over at The First Grade Parade. My kiddos love Daily Dish and it's a great way to practice editing and sentence structure.
Music & Movement: I love starting the morning with Youtube and songs. There are countless videos that just make my job so much easier. Harry Kindergarten is our favorite! This is also a time where we do a few GoNoodle songs to start our day on a positive note. Who doesn't want to start their day with a mini dance party?!?!
Reading Block: Our school has adopted Reading Street as our curriculum. While I do like the weekly stories, questions/videos of the week, I am not a fan of their phonics section. So, I use various materials from tpt and blogs to enhance the phonics portion. This could be a entire blog post by itself so I'm just going to share a few things...
Some of my favorite ELAR tools/websites include:
Reading A-Z
TPT
Oriental Trading (This is where I get most of my reading pointers, etc...)
Read Aloud:
Currently we are reading Kid President's book. My kids LOVE him and so do I! We learn about 5 rules a day. Afterwards, we'll usually watch one of his pep talks. :)
Math: Once again, this could be another individual blog post. We use GoMath. However, I feel the need to add my own spin on it. Here's a few places I look:
Mr. Greg from The Kindergarten Smorgasboard has fabulous math games. We are always playing one of his games and using his stations. :)
TPT
Interactive Notebook ideas come from various places but mostly TPT.
RTI: I'm very fortunate at my school to have a designated RTI time. A couple of days a week, our paraprofessionals will come in and take our Tier 1 kiddos to another room and work on a project. This gives me time to work with my Tier 2 and Tier 3 kiddos. I usually have one group working on stations while the other group is working with me.
Most of my RTI materials come from Lakeshore and TPT.
I love Babbling Abby's RTI materials. We use them daily.
I hope this post has given you a little bit of insight into my daily schedule. :)
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