New Favourite for Organization

Anyone who knows me as a teacher knows that I love to organize absolutely everything in my classroom. I enjoy finding new ways to store materials, resources, and other classroom goodies in a way that keeps everything neat and tidy but still easily accessible. Enter one of my new favourite finds for this year:

I found these plastic binder envelopes at Costco this fall and I love them. They can hold up to 100 pieces of paper and are strong and durable. I have to admit I don't actually use them in binders as I find they tend to stick out too far when the binders are closed (just a hint of OCD when it comes to my classroom) but if I cut off the 3-holes with scissors they fit perfectly in the white magazine holders from IKEA.









The best part about these babies is the price. It cost $10.00 for 25 plastic sleeves and I can think of so many uses for them. At this point I am using them to hold all the little bits and pieces I use for each of my Math units. Some of the envelopes hold the pieces for our interactive notebooks while others hold the cards needed for Math games. I was actually surprised at how much they held. The nice thing I can easily label them with a Sharpie and since the plastic is nice and smooth I can take the Sharpie off using a whiteboard marker later. (If you haven't tried this yet by the way you need to. You can remove Sharpie by colouring over it with a dry erase marker and then wiping it off.

I had hoped to use them as a write on/wipe off cover for worksheets but I think they are actually a little too thick (as in hold too many papers) to keep one piece of paper in one place for students to work on. What would you use these for? I would love some more ideas.

Activities Like... New Ideas... and Kind Hearted-Teachers

Hi all I am linking up late to the We Are Thankful Linky Party over at Blog Hoppin'. It has been a crazy couple of weeks and I have kind of ignored blogging so now I am trying to play catch up by doing a 3-in-1 post for this linky. I am Canadian so technically Thanksgiving has already passed for me but I loved the idea of sharing some ideas with the attitude of being thankful. I have learned so much from being connected to other bloggers and stealing borrowing ideas to use in my classroom and it has been wonderful! I am so thankful for all those who take the time to share their lessons, ideas, and wisdom by blogging. Thank you!

Activities like math centers get my students excited for math, keep them practicing basic skills, and allow me to teach in small groups using math rotations. This is my first year doing math centers and math rotations and my first attempt in September was not as smooth as I hoped. Since then I have taken a break, regrouped and set up some new centers.  I have been working hard over the last couple weeks to get my new math centers set up and organized. Finally they are ready to go and I am so excited! Now as we start our next math unit I can jump back into math rotations and differentiate my lessons. Hooray for being able to teach my students in small groups based on where they are at while the rest are kept focused and busy with math centers!!

All my centers activities fit neatly into one container and can simply be laid out during center time.

As I was putting my math centers together I was trying to figure out how to keep everything together with the little space, time, and money that I have. My centers in September were kept in basket containers but I found students had a difficult time knowing where everything went when they were putting things away. I have found a cheap and easy method for keeping centers small, compact, and easy to move from space to space.

Students take the plastic sleeve to their desk with their center packet and have all the materials they need.

My new idea for organization in the classroom is using plastic page protectors to keep everything together. We have been using these for our spelling program so students can keep all their spelling materials together in one spot. These plastic envelopes are great because they are durable, clear (which I find helps students keep their materials neat and tidy), and can be written on. In spelling my students are placed in different groups based on where they are at so I simply coloured the top corner of their plastic sleeve so they know what colour group they are in. It is such an easy way for me to pull out their stuff and know immediately what group they are in, what they have been working on, and where they need to go next.

The coloured blocks on the corner of the packet let me know what group the student is in.

I have also used these for all my new math centers which is great because all the centers materials fit in two baskets and take up way less room. Students simply grab the plastic sleeve for their center, take it to their working area and get to work. All the materials are kept in the plastic sleeve which is kept closed with a paperclip. I know they don't look that pretty and there are a lot of containers, plastic drawer stands, and other great ideas for centers however I have limited wall space in my room (lots of cupboards) so I like to keep things small and compact. Best of all they are inexpensive so if one of the plastic sleeves gets ruined I can simply replace it with a new one for about $0.15.

This center contains vocabulary cards, play money, a dry erase crayon and dry erase page to write on.
 Everything a student may need to complete the center.

Finally as my contribution to the Kind-Hearted Teachers part of this linky I am including some of my math center pages as a freebie. Many of my materials are from other teachers so I don't feel like I can share them but if you are looking for some great math center ideas please send me an email or leave a comment and I will gladly direct you to some of the places where I found my center ideas.

Thanks to Blog Hoppin' for this wonderful opportunity to link-up and share!

Giving Math Rotations a Spin

This summer as I was surfing the many different teaching websites I stumbled across the idea of using math rotations over at 3rd Grade Thoughts. The more I read the more excited I became. Last year I found I had a difficult time differentiating my math instruction and had thought about trying to work in small groups but wasn't sure how to start. Stephanie's blog posts gave me an idea of how to get going.

After a month of introducing the concept to the students we have finally completed our first few weeks of full Math Rotations. Right now I'm trying to convince myself to stick with it. It is definitely going to take some getting used to. I have learned that I am still developing the habits and pre-planning necessary to make these rotations work. On the plus side though the students love it. They are always more excited when they see Math Rotations on the schedule instead of plain old Math class. It  has not gone as smoothly as I hoped but I am learning first attempts seldom do so I am going to share with you some of my thoughts, reflections and plans for moving ahead to try and make this system work for me and my students.

First of all I have to say that I am loving the chance to work with smaller groups of students. I feel I have a much better grasp of where students are at and how I can help them which is great. One thing I need to work on though is ensuring my high group is feeling challenged in their learning and my lower groups are able to complete the practice sheets provided by the curriculum. I am still trying to decide how I am going to deal with this. I find it is a common issue to have in math - one group finishes the required work in 10 minutes and another group needs 40 minutes to do the same sheet. I might try giving the lower group fewer required questions (they need to finish part a and b of each question) to complete and see if that works. If they finish the required amount early they can try to complete the rest of the questions. As for the higher group I am hoping to gather a collection of challenge sheets that will push them beyond our current curriculum to ensure they don't get bored. Like I said... still working it all out.

The other aspect of this that is fairly new to me is the Math centers portion of it. In the last couple years I have spent more time putting literacy centers together and haven`t really gotten around to Math centers. Our curriculum has lots of hands on activities and games scattered throughout so I never really felt the need to use centers before however with Math Rotations centers are pretty much a necessity. For the first month I tried to have centers related directly to our unit of study however I found students seemed to be getting bored with them since it was a lot of the same thing over and over again. I think when I change them up I will try to have centers dealing with different math skills I think are important. That way they get extra practice as well as some exposure to concepts we will be covering later in the year. One thing I do know is I will be spending some a bunch of time figuring out new centers in the next couple weeks. How do you plan/organize your centers? I would love to get more ideas on how to keep it as simple as I can for myself. 3rd Grade Thoughts has some great ideas but I am always looking for more.

Finally I am re-evaluating how I have organized my centers. So far it has worked fairly well and the students always seem to know where they are supposed to be and what they are working on I'm just not sure I like how I move the kids through the centers. Right now I am using a checklist to keep track of what center

students have completed and am trying to constantly remind them to keep track of things in their Math journals. It's slightly chaotic and I feel there has to be an easier way. I think I may try putting together center packets and having students use their Math duo-tangs to move through the centers. I will still use the clips with their names and move them from center to center but my hope is if they have everything in advance they can be a little more independent and move through the centers themselves.

Wow... that was a long one. Basically my thoughts on Math Rotations are this:
1. They require a lot of pre-planning to ensure you have everything ready to go.
2. It takes work to keep it organized and to update the centers on a semi-regular basis.
3. They are totally worth it if you want a way to differentiate your instruction and keep students engaged in different math activities during class!