Reading Rotations

When I was on my second year practicum I was in a year 1 & 2 class with a very capable senior teacher. She had a rotation system that incorporated a range of different activities that fell under the literacy umbrella. Although mine looks quite different from hers, this is where my inspiration for literacy rotations started.

Note: My rotation started with completely different activities than you see below. The photo you see below is where I have ended up.

Initially, I had poetry, big books, whiteboards, iPads, teacher and because at the time I had 6 groups, library or something else of that nature. I found although the students like the rotation idea they got quite restless for a range of different reasons. For some students it wasn't structured enough, for others it was too much freedom and for some, it was simply too challenging to sit and read a book alone so for that reason I took poetry, big books and library time out of the rotations. This was made earlier buy the merging of two groups, leaving me with 5 reading groups instead of 6.
I am lucky enough to have a teacher aid that has been on the Yolanda Phonics course and was capable of taking small phonics groups so I turned one of my rotations into a phonics station. I saw a need to work on handwriting so I set up a handwriting station which was a mixture of activities including using a whiteboard, making letters with playdough or simply working on a page in their handwriting book. Another group often would go on iPads to do Sunshine Classics and if they finished their books then they could go on Eggy Words. Another rotation was guided reading with the teacher then after that they were expected to go away and read their book to someone in their group. This worked well and students were engaged and enjoyed literacy rotations but as I learnt new things options for new rotations emerged.

After I went to the Yolanda Phonics course myself I was able to teach phonics as a class and as my students became more capable I found phonics wasn't something that I needed to focus on as much. I used my teacher aid as an extra pair of hands getting through the reading groups or reading one on one with students I thought needed extra support. Thanks to some in-class support by Heather Collins I started to feel more comfortable with the iPads in the classroom and over time created follow up EE's that are independent tasks students can do on the iPad. Each book students reads with a teacher has a follow up EE to complete that target focus areas for each student. For example, one of the activities is recording themselves explaining what the book is about because I noticed students struggled with retelling the main parts of the book. It also targets oral language which is an area my students need work on. Another activity might relate to their LI for the book, for example identifying adjectives or finding words in their book ending with specific endings. I find my students really like literacy rotations because they know that even if they don't like a specific rotation that if they sit there and do it for 15 minutes they will be moved to a new station. It keeps everything quite fresh and exciting.

Play is only very new to our class. Update to come when I learn more about it.

Takeaway - These rotations can change as I as a teacher changes and as my class changes too. As gaps are filled and new gaps arise the rotations can be altered and adapted for the needs of students. An example of this was when I noticed spelling was something my class struggled with, I put spelling as one of the rotations in an attempt to fill that need.

Classroom Management

Room 2 is made up of 25 students. Of those 25 students, only 9 of them are girls and the rest are boys. This means sitting still on the mat for a period longer than 5 minutes can be quite challenging. To combat this I have started using a timer. I put the timer on for 5 minutes and I don't keep the students any longer than that five minutes. The knowledge that they will be able to leave in a specific period of time seems to be working. My goal would be to work that time up little by little until they are able to sit without a timer.

Monitoring noise level inside the classroom and gaining the WHOLE classes attention has been another area I have been working on. Again, the large majority of high energy boys has made me think about the way in which I do this. I started using a bell or anything that meant I didn't have to raise my voice over them, I even tried a drum for a day (it didn't work). My mentor teacher suggested I try doing it with "no bells or whistles" and see how they react. I swapped out my bell for a "one, two, fold-away" chant which appealed to my whole class because they got to chant it back, it had the added bonus of the fact all students then had to fold their arms away. I kept chanting "one, two fold-away" until every student had their hands folded away. I made it clear that I would know people were listening when their arms were folded. This quickly became the expectation and in a few days, I was seeing a huge improvement. The key for me was being patient and waiting for every student. Setting the expectation and waiting for it to be met. I found if I was letting one little thing go that it escalated quickly from there.
HUGE TAKEAWAY - No bells and whistles, while it might work for some teachers in some classrooms, my class (boy heavy) reacted far better to my voice and the very clear expectations the chant sets.

Update: We have recently heard a new chant, "hands-on top," and the students chant back saying "that means stop." It seems to have the same positive impact on students but they seem to like it more. Added bonus, you can very clearly see they have stopped what they are doing and they are paying attention.