centers Archives - Tales from Outside the Classroom

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Successive Blending: A Phoneme Blending Strategy

Successive Blending is a decoding strategy for students that struggle to blend more than two sounds when reading words. It’s really a blending strategy to support readers that are struggling with decoding. Many of these students add and omit sounds when blending. Some students even blend words that seem disconnected from their sounds. These are those students that say /m/ /a/ /p/ and then say “fat?”. It’s also a great instructional strategy for those students

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18 Non-Print Phonemic Awareness Activities for Early Readers

In continuing my posts on phonological awareness, we’re focusing on phonemic awareness activities. If you missed my posts on What is Phonological Awareness and What is Phonemic Awareness, you might find it helpful to begin there. All of the activities in this post are without letters/print. When working on beginning phonemic awareness tasks, I believe it’s beneficial to do some practice without letters. The cognitive load required to do the phonemic awareness task and connect

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How I Schedule My Math Block: Instruction & Centers Structure

For my first several years of teaching, I struggled with teaching math. I tried teaching what I thought was Guided Math to my small groups. I hated it and didn’t feel like I had enough time to teach my students. I tried teaching whole group, but too many students struggled to stay engaged and I struggled to see the work they were doing to provide feedback and support. For a year and a half I

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Using Powerpoint for Centers Management

Over the years, I’ve used a variety of systems to manage my small groups and centers rotations. I’ve used Slides and Powerpoint to display one chart with different slides for each day of the week as detailed in my Small Group Instruction Management post. My Editable Centers and Small Group Display has been a savior for that! I’ve also used Powerpoint to time, signal, and rotate through my small group rotations each day. Every year,

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Managing your Small Group Schedule Display

Small Group Instruction Management

I’ve changed up my small group and centers rotation display several times over the years. My first year, my partner teacher and I grouped between classes so we had several groups to manage. Our set up looked something like this (but with quite a few more places the students actually went to) and with three rotations each day. Every morning I’d move the center rotation cards so the students knew where they’d go when since

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Hi! I’m Tessa!

I’ve spent the last 15 years teaching in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades, and working beside elementary classrooms as an instructional coach and resource support. I’m passionate about math, literacy, and finding ways to make teachers’ days easier. I share from my experiences both in and out of the elementary classroom. Read more About Me.

Successive Blending: A Phoneme Blending Strategy

18 Non-Print Phonemic Awareness Activities for Early Readers