Planning It All Out

This is one of my favorite things to do during the summer! Once the school year starts, things just seem to get so busy and I really enjoy when I have relaxed time to reflect on and plan out my school year. 

I thought I would share how I pace out my curriculum during the year and also what my daily schedule looks like.  

I integrate my science and social studies concepts into my literacy and math units to tie everything together thematically.

You also may notice that in my daily schedule I do not have math and/or literacy stations incorporated. We have a lot of specials at my campus and therefore barely have time to make all the classroom lessons fit! Therefore, I do stations once every 2 weeks during either my ELA or Math block (depends on the week).

Happy Planning!

Stations In The Primary Classroom

Stations, whether Literacy Stations, Math Stations, or STEM Stations are something that I have seen ALL over the blogging universe and it seems like something EVERYONE is doing.  When I first discovered the blogging world I was so inspired by the fun ideas and have been trying to incorporate literacy stations and math stations into my daily routine ever since!

Well, let me tell you...I have been trying for the last 2 years and it seemed like I could never completely find my grove with all these stations.  One of the biggest challenges I had was TIME! My school is so blessed to have many many different pull out times (such as spanish, computer lab, etc) that I was never really finding a good time for BOTH math and literacy stations.  

SO here is how I made time... COMBINING ALL THE STATIONS INTO ONE TIME! 

Here are some of my favorite things about this time...

What do I mean by fast finishers activities - during this time if any students didn't have a chance to finish an activity of the day then they finish at this time before they go to their stations.

I also love doing stations for the ending part of our day - my littles are often exhausted from the day that this is usually a great independent, relaxed play. The students are having extra practice and doing activities that they have previously been exposed to. 

Note: Sometimes I combine the literacy tubs & work on writing choice into one choice and then add a stem based activity.

I am LOVE, LOVE, LOVING how this works in my classroom!! How do you do stations? I'd love to hear!!