One of the things I’ve been most frustrated with since I started using Literacy Work Stations (about 6 or 7 years ago) was my small group time.  I’ve always felt like I could meet with more than one group a day and ideally, I would like to be able to see all my kiddos everyday in small groups.  I cannot do this alone, so I will use my assistant to work with some of the groups as well.

This will work really well as long as I have  an assistant (or a student teacher!!!).  After that, my assistant or I will see at least 4 out of the 5 groups a day.

I was telling my student teacher that sometimes you just have to work with small groups like this and then suddenly, the perfect plan will happen!  It finally did–6 years later! 🙂

When I speak of small groups I am speaking of Guided Reading Groups. 🙂

Here’s how it will look:

8:40-8:55 Morning Message/Opening Routine (Journeys)

8:55-9:15 Shared Reading

9:15-9:30 Literacy Work Stations/Small Group with me/Small Group with my student teacher/10 students to Waterford Literacy

9:30-9:45 Phonemic Awareness game/mini-lesson

9:45-10:00 Literacy Work Stations/Small Group with me/Small Group with my student teacher/Small Group with my assistant

10:00-10:20 Clean up/Writing mini-lesson

10:20-10:50 Writer’s Workshop

10:50-10:55 Clean up for Lunch

So during the first round of work stations I will meet with group 1, my student teacher will meet with group 3 and my assistant will meet with 10 students (5 will use Waterford Literacy and 5 will have their guided reading lesson).  During the second round of work stations, I will meet with group 2, my student teacher will meet with group 4 and my assistant will meet with group 5 (or the other 1/2 of the students who did not get their guided reading group because they were using Waterford).  The children who attended the guided reading group in round 1 (who were not on the computer) will go back to the computer lab during our math work stations to get their Waterford time.

Confused?? So was I, but I think I can make it all work! 🙂

I really, really, REALLY like Literacy Work Stations, but this will help me create fewer activities for them so I can pick the best activities that will help my students learn the most.  I will still have at least 10 activities out, but it will take the students a bit longer to get through all of them, so it will increase their “staying power” and I will drive myself less crazy trying to change the activities out once a month. 🙂

Most of my activities stay for a month right now, but having said that, I will say that I do change them out frequently to allow for learning new sight words, new skills, new letters, etc.  Same activities, but we can practice new skills with them.

I’ll let you know how this works!  I’m glad I have my timer from IKEA (see Monday’s post) to keep me on track! 😉

Kristen 🙂