Greg Smedley-Warren: Centers Made Simple with Smorgie

hello everyone welcome to centers made simple with smorgy I'm Rochelle and I'm excited to be your host for today's webinar featuring the one and only Gregg Smedley Warren from the kindergarten Smorgasburg we'll get started with Gregg's presentation in just a moment but first we have a few housekeeping details for you for better audio video quality clothes other applications like Skype that use bandwidth if you are having any audio or video issues try refreshing or changing your browsers we will be using the question feature today since everyone is muted during the webinar if you have a question type it in the box let's practice now everyone find the question box and type in where you are from it looks like we have people from all over joining us today in the webinar today for attending the webinar you will receive a certificate of attendance for attending today's webinar live your certificate of attendance will be emailed to you within two days now for prizes everyone live on the call tonight gets the kindergarden smorgasbord pickle letters and sounds unit for lucky winners will receive one free year of ES GI and the grand prize winner will receive a one-year ES GI license and a $50 gift card to the kindergarten Smorgasburg TPT store we here at es GI are thrilled that so many of you register to learn with Gregg today thanks to all of you who are dedicated to helping children and families now I'm going to turn it over to Gregg let the learning begin hello everybody this is gray from the kindergarten smorgasbord a little bit about myself I've been teaching for 11 years seven of those years have been in kindergarten I did not go willingly to kindergarten I was placed there by a former principal and when I found out I was moving to kindergarten I did what all grown men do I called my mommy and cried but on my first day in kindergarten I fell in love and I knew that I had found my calling and my passion and now if anyone would try to move me from kindergarten they would have to do so with me kicking and screaming I'm so excited to be hosting another webinar with my friends from ESG I and I want to say a huge thank you to all of you who are taking time out of your busy evening to learn about centers and to gain new ideas for your math and literacy centers I'm a huge fan and proponent and believer of using centers or workstations in the classroom today I'm going to share a simple center management system that is kid-friendly and teacher friendly I'm also excited to show you how kindergarten smorgasbords centers and workstations our teacher and kid friendly which helps make centers very simple and finally I'm going to show you some ideas for DIY do-it-yourself centers for your classroom for years I struggled to find a way to manage and run my centers that didn't stress me out and make me never want to do centers again it was painful some days and finally I went to a make and take session offered by my district and learned about a center wheel and my world was changed I have spent years tweaking and adapting this center wheel idea into what you're going to see today and after all these years Center time is my favorite time in the classroom in fact our classroom is considered a center based classroom because most of our day is spent in our centers I hope this webinar provides you with new ideas for managing your centers and new ideas for center activities I know the feeling of attending a professional development session and leaving with nothing and feeling like you'll never get that hour back I went for you today to walk away from this webinar with at least one usable idea that you can implement lent into your classroom tomorrow as my friend Oprah says I hope you find your aha moment so why workstations or why centers centers can be very moment there is a today in centers are the perfect way to bring hands-on engaging fun into our classrooms what's more motivating than having fun centers allow students to apply and practice the skills we've been learning in our classrooms and centers give us teacher freedom this freedom allows us to do guided reading or guided math groups small group instruction and one-on-one instruction it's during center time that I am pulling groups or working with students individually the students are engaged in their centers and I'm free to work with my students as needed why workstations and centers differentiation centers allows us to differentiate our learner I think so that all students can be successful and we can meet the needs of all of our students we can target our centers to meet the needs of students so they can be successful and have the scaffolding and support necessary to learn and grow this differentiation allows them to be successful and allows us to target our instruction using ESG I to assess my students and to use that data allows me to form my groups and differentiate centers for each group what makes affective centers centers need to be organized materials need to be clearly labeled so students and the teacher can find what they need when they need it you need an area for students to put their incomplete center work so they can finish it later having your centers organized allows students to work successfully and independently which again gives us teacher freedom to do what we need to do and speaking of organized your centers should also be organized when they're not in use in the classroom for centers I am not using they are sorted by skill I have a tub for each skill in our classroom for example I have a tub for letters a tub for sounds a tub for numbers a tub for adding etc this makes it easy to pull new centers and change out centers I don't have to dig through a box of February themed centers to find something for addition I can simply go to the addition tub and pull out a new addition center what makes effective centers centers need to be engaging if we want our students to learn they need to be engaged in their centers students need choice and voice in their centers they need a voice in their learning and giving them choices in their centers allows them to be engaged the more choice we have the more engaged we are the more engaged we are the less behavior issues we have centers need to be fun we learn more when we have fun our circuit our students deserve to have fun while learning and so we need to make our centers fun effective workstations need to be set up so students can do them independently students need to be able to work and complete their centers independently with little to no help from the teacher this again protects our teacher freedom so we can conduct our small groups and conferences and fun yes I said it twice because it's that important it's our job to make learning accessible to all students and the best way to do that is by making learning fun make your sensors fun for your students what makes affective centers our centers need to have a consistent structure every day the same consistent structure the structure and the process stays the same the only thing that changes is the skill and since research tells us that the brain loves novelty simply by changing clipart or theme creates a new experience for our kids the structure and the process stay the same the skill and the clipart change creating novelty and engaging the brain at higher levels it's new and engaging for our students and easy for us teachers this is the underlying philosophy that I follow when I'm creating my centers if you use kinder book kindergarten smorgasbord centers in your classroom you will see that consistent structure and process in every Center once you introduce kindergarten smörgåsbord centers at the beginning of the year you won't have to spend very much time reteaching new centers each week that means more time and centers which means more fun and learning and less time spent on giving directions and introducing new centers what makes effective centers our centers need to be aligned to our curriculum and standards whatever standards your state or district uses make sure your centers are aligned to those standards and that your centers are meeting those standards so how do we do centers our center management system is both teacher and student friendly it's visual and color coded so it's easy for students to use and follow we use actual photographs of the actual centers in our classroom to make our center management system visual and it's teacher friendly it makes it easy for us because there's less transition time and prep work and because the center management system is visual the students aren't asking us questions about what centers to go to where do they need to go today what do we do when we're finished it's very kid friendly and very teacher friendly our center management system allows students to be independent during center time and gives them control over their learning how do we do this we give them choices there are choices built into our Center time a lot of choices the students are not reliant on us to know where to go or what to do choice means they get to do what they want and what they like this means they're more engaged and that means less behavior issues and because our centers are differentiated their choices are always meeting their needs and so while the students have a lot of choice and voice in their centers I have the ultimate control over their centers and what they're learning on because I'm differentiating the centers they can still have the choice but those choices are still meeting the needs of that student in that group in our classroom we have five centers for literacy we have a listening Center and computers and Technology Center a library or read to self Center a write the room Center and our literacy tubs you might notice that these are very similar or to the daily five I tried the daily five in my classroom several years ago and found that it didn't work well for our needs and for how I was running my classroom so now we use some pieces of the daily five in our Center system and it's a it's somewhat of a modified daily five type system the listening Center is where of course students can listen to a story I use personal CD players and every week we have four different stories that the students can listen to those stories are always the mattock or tied into what we're learning or the season or holiday and again students can choose any of the stories to listen to so even in listening they have lots of choice in our computer and technology center we have computers iPads augmented reality and our smart board when students are in the technology or computer center they can choose any of the technology or computers in our classroom for the library and read to self-center the students are free to choose any book from our classroom library any of their guided reading books or their library ebooks they're also free to sit or lay anywhere in the classroom that they would like for write the room we have normally in our classroom we will have three or four different write the room activities around the classroom so again there's choice and the students can choose which write the room activity they would like to do and finally our literacy tubs each group has nine different literacy tubs each tub contains one differentiated activity so when the students are in their tubs for center time they have nine different activities that they can choose from once they complete that activity they're free to do it again or they're free to pick another tub tubs are where you find letters sounds sight words writing word work etc so instead of having a sight word center we have our tubs instead of having a Writing Center we have our tubs so instead of having individual centers around the classroom we have our tubs that encompass all of the things that you might have as an individual Center in our classroom we have for math centers we have ten frames and graphing and in this Center you will always have ten frame cards that are thematic or holiday themed and those are so students can practice number recognition and one-to-one correspondence all year long there's also graphing included and in that and the graphing you're gonna find my seat count graph creations where students are counting and graphing and analyzing data we have our math bass which are very similar to our literacy tubs we have math the room which is very similar to right the room but instead of writing they're counting and writing numbers later in the year will even have addition and subtraction as part of math the room technology is also one of our math centers and again they're free to choose any of the technology that we have in our classroom our math centers run the same way as our literacy centers we use a wheel and color-coded groups in our classroom we have four groups four Center time for both literacy and math Center these are our Center groups these groups are not the same as our guided reading groups these are our Center groups there might be some overlap in the two groups but they're not always the same groups depending on your class size you might need more than four groups I recommend four or five students per group so in order to determine how many groups you would have divide your class by four or five if you have more than four groups you would have more than four colors on your Center wheel these groups are very fluid and are based on skills that we're working on I use ESG AI to assess the skills and I use that instant and fast data to form my groups the groups are very fluid and change often using est AI and the speed that I can assess my students makes adjusting my groups very easy and very stress-free so how do we do it how do we do centers simply in our classroom number one we check the basket number two if you have work in the basket then you do it if you don't have work in the basket go to step number three number three you check the wheel the wheel tells you where you can go that day number four which is the hardest step of all as we get to work so we checked the basket if we have work we have to finish it if we don't have any work we go to number three which means we check the wheel the wheel tells us where to go and then of course we have to get to work so number one we check the basket so these are unfinished Center work basket there's a basket for literacy and a basket for math if you look closely at this photograph you can tell though in this day someone did not follow directions and they placed their math work in the literacy basket if a student doesn't finish a center when the cleanup song comes on that paper goes in the unfinished work basket there is a basket for literacy centers and a basket for math centers the first thing they do when it's time to go to centers the next day is check the basket if they have work in the basket they must finish that work if they don't have anything to finish then they can check the wheel so this video will show you a student checking the basket finding some work and going to find that work so he can finish it this video has no sound so you only see the video so here the basket he finds something that he needs to finish so he's going to go to his tubs he will find that tub with the activity that he needs to finish and off he will go to finish his activity or his center the center wheel is the heart of our center management system the wheel lets us know our choices for the day if students ask me where to go I tell them I don't know because I'm not a wheel and I don't look like a wheel everything in our center system is color-coded and visual as you can see this allows for student independence the students find their name on the in the groups the groups are simply colored pieces of paper that are laminated and I write the names on the paper with dry erase markers so it's very easy to change out their names when they find their name they know their color if your name is on purple you're in the purple group if your name is on blue you're in the blue group once they know what color their group is they find that color on the wheel the wheel will tell them what their Center choices are for the day do students have to do every choice in every Center no that's where the voice and choice comes in because there are so many choices built into our Center time I don't expect them to do every Center and every choice if they want to do the same literacy tub Oh run over again that's ok if they want to do the same right the room over and over again that's ok that's not a battle that I'm willing to fight because they're still learning because everything is differentiated they're still having their needs met it's their choice if I notice that someone is doing something over and over again I will strongly encourage them to try something new and different the best way to do this is say hey did you know that I put something new into your tubs you should go see if you can find it and try the new the new center that usually motivates them to go pick a new tub or a new right the room or a new app on the iPad students can work alone or with other students in their group again it's their choice if they choose to work alone that's perfectly okay if they excuse to work with two or three people that's perfectly okay too it's all about giving them the choice and the voice and about us giving up control so if you check the basket and you have nothing to do no work to finish then you check the wheel when you check the wheel you find out what color your group is if you're in the purple group for example you can see that you can choose tubs or write the ring if you choose your tubs there are nine different tubs for your group the tubs are color-coded if you're in the purple group you can only pick a purple tub however you can pick any of the purple tones so if there are nine purple tubs you have nine choice this if you go to tubs that day you can choose any of those nine or if you're in the purple group as you can see on our wheel you can go to write the room and again in write the room it's color-coded there is a purple basket for write the room so the purple group would use their write their room activity from the purple basket so in the purple group you can choose tubs or write the room you are free to move between the two choices for that day so if you finish a tub you can choose another tub or you can go to write the room if you go to write the room and you finish write the room and you want to go to your tub you can go to your tub you are free to move between those two choices however you cannot go to any other centers that day you cannot go to to the library you cannot go to technology you must stay in touch and right the room so in this day the purple group cannot go to technology they can only go to tubs and right the rim again that's where having all of the choices built-in comes in and becomes important the whale gives them two choices for the day within those two choices are more choices they the students have control over how they spend their Center time giving them the choice in the voice empowers our students when they are empowered they have more buy-in and buy-in means less behavior issues so within each of the center's are more choices so they have a multitude of choices this is important because we do not transition from centers to center we do not clean up and move to new centers after 15 minutes we stay in our two centers for our entire Center time which on average in a classroom runs about 45 minutes to an hour or a little longer that's why the choices are so important because there's no cleaning up and transitioning to new centers we need lots of choices so we stay engaged with all of the choices the students don't get bored or run out of things to do and it eliminates the issue of early finishers or fast finishers because if they finish one center we have plenty of other choices that they can do this next video is gonna show you a student who checks the basket she has nothing to finish so she checks the wheel and she goes off to her Center she is wearing a GoPro camera so that's why the video looks the way it does so she checks the basket there's nothing for her to finish she checks the wheel the wheel tells her to go to her tubs she is in the green group so she will accuse a green tub she's chosen the activity that she wants and so now she's going to go off and get to work on her Center so how often do you do you change centers this is a question I get asked a lot because with with so many choices in the math baskets the literacy tubs the right the room the listening that's a lot of centers and if I if I changed centers every week I would be at school every Friday until midnight so I don't change centers every week what I do is every two weeks I shift some of the activities from the pink group to the purple group I shift some of the purple activities to the green group and some of the green activities to the blue group this keeps it fresh and new and engaging for everyone everyone is seeing new activities so then what I need to do because I don't I have a few empty purple or sorry a few empty pink tubs I can just pull a couple of new centers and throw those in the pink tubs or the pink math baskets and tada everybody has something new and fresh that means I don't have to spend hours on Friday or Monday morning changing centers and I don't have to spend a lot of time on Monday morning teaching new centers because everyone has seen all the center's the students can rely on each other to help so instead of asking me for help they can ask each other and again because I'm creating all of my center activities with that consistent structure and the consistent process it doesn't require a lot of reteaching everyone can do everything independently so what if they're off task if a student is off task they get a reminder if they're off task again they must clean up and they lose their choice and their fun if this happens during in literacy centers they clean up they get a clipboard and a pencil and they must write sight words with a paper and pencil if it happens during math centers they must clean up and write numbers early in the year they might be writing numbers 210 or 220 later in the year they write numbers to 100 students are still learning and they're still academics but they've lost their choice and they're fun here are some management tips for your Center time how do you keep it from being so loud and noisy use music to keep the volume down play some soft music in your classroom during center time if the students can't hear the music then they're too loud and so this is an expectation in our classroom that if you can't hear the music during center time then you're too loud and you need to use your quiet voice however with that being said I want my kids talking during centers I want there to be noise that noise and conversation is so important to their learning and to their social skills so I don't expect our Center time to be silent I don't expect it to be a wild party but I do expect and I do want and encourage them to talk and share what they're learning and working on so I do expect there to be noise we just have to train them and set the expectation to use their quiet voice what about accountability how do you keep them accountable how do you make them do what they're supposed to do a lot of that comes from expectations which I'll talk about in a second however all of the centers in our classroom and again because I'm creating the centers this is part of that consistent structure and process all of the centers in our classroom have recording sheets so the students have something that they're writing to go with their Center that helps keep them accountable and can give me a record of what they're working on I also will get up and move around the room during the transitions between guided reading groups or math groups and I can monitor the students the students learn that this is happening and so they learn that they understand that I'll be up and down and checking on them so that it helps keep them accountable and keep them on task it also goes back to expectations and modeling we have to set the expectations high in our classroom my students know that they have to be working during centers or they lose their choice and fun and they don't want to lose their fun and then have to write cite words or numbers so that helps keep them on task also almost every day before we go into our Center time we do a quick review of what's expected we go over the rules we go over the procedure we talk about what we're gonna do how we're gonna do it and what that looks like just quick one or two minutes and then they go off into centers they need that daily reminder of what's expected of them also don't be afraid to stop your center time and have a quick class meeting to address any issues in our classroom if I noticed a lot of students are just kind of roaming around the room then we'll play the cleanup song everyone will clean up we'll come back to the carpet we'll talk about what was going on and what was happening and how we can fix it and what we should be doing and we'll go back into centers so don't be afraid to stop and address any issues that you see happening and again set the expectations high if we set our expectations high our students will icky click patient if we set our expectations low our students will meet those low expectations another question that I get that goes along with managing your centers do i Grade Center work do I collect their Center work no and no I don't grade it I don't collect it I check it students will show me their recording sheet I'll glance at it I give them a thumbs up it goes in the cubby and goes home I don't need to collect and grade all of their Center work centers are for practice not assessment I use est I to assess I use centers to practice their skills another question that I get a lot is how do you keep kids from interrupting your guided reading groups or your math groups or your assessments or your writing conferences I've tried everything a tiara a hat a tie attack light on my table nothing worked then I came up with the idea of a stoplight our students naturally know red means stop green means go they're also very visual so I went to Lowe's you can also go to Home Depot or Walmart and bought a red light bulb I got an old lamp I removed the lampshade put the red light bulb into the lamp and it sits on my guided reading table my students are trained that if that red light is on it means stop you cannot come to my guided reading table that means I'm busy and cannot be interrupted red light means stop it works very well because it's very visual and it's very natural for the kids red means stop this is why again having those consistent centers with the process staying the same is so important because they they don't need a lot of teacher help they can ask their friends another tip have an expert for your computers and your technology have a student in the class who can address computer and iPad or smart word issues so again the students don't have to interrupt you in our classroom if the red light is on the students know not to interrupt me unless they are in danger they're hurt or they're dead my kids know that red means stop so this red light is a perfect visual to keep them from interrupting guided reading or math groups if they need help they ask friend now I want to show you what our consistent centers look like in our classroom I create my centers to be consistent from the beginning of the year until the end of the year this process stays the same what changes are the skills and the clipart this means that we don't have to spend a lot of time each week teaching new centers which means more time on task more instructional time which means more learning and more fun it's a very kid friendly and very teacher friendly and so you can see in this slide we use a lot of spinners and so you can see there's a popcorn spinner and there's a sparkly spinner working on letters number recognition you will see spinners and our centers throughout the entire school year letters sounds CVC words blends sight words the spinners always stay the same the same process just the scale is changing you'll also see we do a lot of clipit games great burning and practicing academic skills but great for fine motor also again it's always the same process it's clipping and matching just the skill will change in our centers we use a lot of puzzles and matching and again you can see more of the spinners we also do a lot of word building again matching puzzles all stay the same process the only thing that's changing are the themes and the skill so in this slide you can see that we're working on letter recognition and beginning sounds very similar process just different skill and theme for most of the center's that I create I create two to three recording sheets which also allows for more differentiation it also allows the center's to be used in a multiple of multitude of ways so you're able to meet the needs of your students 40 to make differentiation easy and again it allows you to meet the needs of all students you can see again matching CVC words matching letters matching uppercase and lowercase letters the very similar consistent structure and process the only thing that's changing are the themes so we've got aliens ABC bootcamp monster trucks very similar consistent structure just a different theme here you can see more matching with letters more matching with beginning sounds so here's a great example of how it's consistent but meaning the different needs of the students and presenting the skills in different ways word building this is my what does the Fox say CBC II edition so this is more of a challenging Center and then we've also got it in CVC words so we can write the CVC word or we can spin and read the word those what does the Fox say are created for the entire school year from the beginning of the school year to the end of the school year the activities are exactly the same the process stays the same all the changes are the skills that we're working on another example of the same skill just slightly different process for each activity again spinning and recognizing the word and matching the word in the picture so as you can see in our classroom very consistent structure and process in our centers which is very very kid-friendly they can do it very independently which means I have a lot of my teacher freedom and I'm not spending a lot of time teaching new centers I often get asked how long does it take all of this to go to get into place and so my advice to you is to watch for the pumpkins so by October mid to late October every should be flowing fairly nicely is it going to be perfect no but by October when the pumpkins come everything should be in place the kids should be settled into the routines they should be familiar with almost all of the centers that I've created and so but by October things are flowing very well I will say our math and literacy centers are the exact same process with the wheel the visual the choices literacy is in the morning math is in the afternoon because literacy is in the morning it goes much smoother than math in the afternoon so that's something to be aware of we tend to spend a lot more time in math being off task and so that's something that we're working on in our classroom to address is how we can make our math centers flow smoothly like our literacy centers do and now I want to show you some simple DIY Center ideas for your classroom so this is a toss across game that I found at a store for ten dollars you can also find them online at Amazon so what I did was I put the game together and the way this works is this is a tic-tac-toe game and so it comes with X's and O's but instead of using the X's and O's I placed velcro dots on each of the sides of the yellow spinners that allows me to create new games simply by popping off cards and putting on new cards and so at the beginning of the year we did simple letter recognition the students toss the beanbag whatever letter they landed on they found that letter on their recording sheet and colored the letter or they had a recording sheet where they had to write the letter later in the year I popped off the letter cards and I added new cards and this is word building so the students spin all of the spinners and they see if they have made any works so on this slide you can see that they made set and so on their paper they would write set they also made hit so they can hit so that's a very challenging center a great way to challenge those of you students that are are reading and who need a little bit more of a challenge in their Center time this can be used for letters sounds CVC words sight words addition subtraction numbers and more I have free recording sheets for this game on my blog rubber duckies grab a set of rubber ducks on Amazon and write letters on the ducks with a sharpie your students can then choose a rubber ducky to learn their letters their sounds you can have them put the rubber duckies in ABC order maybe you don't want rubber duckies that's completely fine but what think outside of the box and imagine and think about what other items can we use to create simple centers for our classroom rubber duckies bottle caps a teacher in my school used flip-flop she found them on clearance she bought a set and she used them to make a learning center very out of the box but very fun and different but Giller items and new and different ways we keep our students engaged and excited and that keeps them learning don't be afraid to jump out of that box and try something new and bold start walking through the Dollar Tree or target dollar spot or Walmart or the hardware store and start looking at items in a different way and start thinking how could I turn that into a Literacy Center or how can I turn that into a math Center for example at the hardware store paint sticks I've grabbed a bunch of paint sticks from the UM Home Depot and the paint sticks over and on the back I wrote a simple sight word sentence through those in the Literacy Center with some picture cards and the students were making silly sentences paint sticks just looked at them in a different way and thought of how I could use those to create new DIY sense in my classroom pool noodles are one of my favorite classroom tools and don't worry a knoweth not pool noodle season but you can still find them online here's an example of using pool noodles for word building cut the pulled noodles into small sections write letters for CVC words have the students build the CVC words read the word and then write the word you can also do letters and ABC order so write the letters of the alphabet on the pool noodle sections and have students put them in ABC order you could even challenge them with a little bit of a stem activity to see if they can build a tower putting the letters in a ABC order you could write numbers and do number order you can write numbers and use plus and minus and have the students build and solve addition and subtraction equations you could do word families you can do blends you could do digraphs you could do cvce words you can do sight words you could even do sentences by using different colors of pull noodles for the different parts of speech again very common material just thinking about different ways to use that in our centers shape note pads and cutouts if you're like me I have drawers full of these shake notepads from the parent teacher store and these shape cutouts from the Dollar Tree so what did I do I simply wrote numbers on the shape notepads stuck them on a piece of cardstock wrote the number word laminated them and now I have a counting Center so the students can use any manipulative in the classroom so they're working on number recognition and counting I also used a ten frame stamp and make ten frames on the Stars wrote numbers on the Rockets so now I have a 10 frame matching Center with these shape note pads and cutouts you can do upper and lowercase letters numbers and ten frames sight words tally marks addition and subtraction equations cite any skill can go on to these shapes simply laminate them and they're they're durable and reusable the great thing about the shapes from the Dollar Tree is that they change very frequently and they change from store to store so if you visit one or two different dollar stores you'll find a bunch of different shapes so you're able to to keep it new and fresh for your students muffin pans you can get muffin pans for a dollar at the dollar tree at Walmart so they're very cheap they're very durable you can even spray paint them if you wanted them to be fun colors you can use post-it notes to label the cups so in this activity I looked at my ESD eye data where I had assessed our sight words an ESD eye provides a bar graph analysis of our most missed sight words so I wrote those sight words on many posted notes stuck them in the muffin pan students have a little a little pom-pom they toss the pom-pom and wherever it lands in the muffin pan they have to read that sight word they build the sight word with magnetic letters and they write the sight words so not only are they engaged but we're also hitting various learning strategies and learning modalities which helps them retain their information you could label the cups with letters sight words numbers addition subtraction equations tally marks simply toss a small object whatever it lands in you could be you could solve the equation you could write the sight work you can make the tally marks very very simple very easy you could change and differentiate keeping it fresh keeping it interesting paper plates so you can get about a hundred paper plates for about three dollars so what I did with my paper plates was I wrote numbers and the dots to go with the numbers then I simply cut the paper plate it's a part in random patterns and made a counting puzzle the puzzle that you see in this slide is the same puzzle that I made seven years ago when I started kindergarten so paper plates hold up very well you could also do the same idea with sight words shapes uppercase and lowercase letters addition and subtraction tally marks and a variety of other skills that our students need to work on and because they're cut in random patterns they have to get the right match so the puzzle will go back together you can even purchase color paper plates if you want to make it more fun Christmas ornaments you can get these for about 50% off after Christmas so what I did was I put sight words on our ornaments I hung those in our classroom and this is one of our write the room activities students can read and write the words you could also do addition and subtraction equations letters numbers tally marks again simply looking at ideas in a whole different way to make learning fun and engaging Dollar Tree um Trey's these are trays for chips and dip from the Dollar Tree they come in a variety of colors the colors chain Lilly so you can have a whole rainbow of craze in your classroom these are great for sorting and matching label the sections with letters have students sort magnetic letters or letter tiles label the sections with numbers and they can sort addition and subtraction equations or tally marks you can do beginning sounds again any skill could be adapted to use these trays in our classroom we have a light box and our favorite manipulative for our light box our melted Solo cups so you can purchase Solo cups from the store you can put them in your oven at about 175 to 200 degrees they melt into a flat circle so that they're very strong and durable I use clear mailing labels and created a c.b.c word building center so they have to choose the picture and then they have to build the word and then they write the word this is great for word building letters sounds sight words addition and subtraction numbers ten frames any skill you want them to work on can be made into a center using melted Solo cups for engaging hands on centers for your classroom you can check out my teachers pay teacher's store here you'll find over 300 resources that are designed to be teacher friendly that are easy to prep and use them in classroom and once you've introduced my centers you won't have to spend valuable instructional time each week introducing and giving directions for new centers you can also visit my blog for lots of free Center ideas center activities and more ideas for DIY centers these links will take you to several of my blog posts and youtube videos on centers in my classroom these links will provide you with more information and more details on our center management Center system and centers in our classroom and now for the prizes okay wonderful thank you thank you thank you can you while we're getting the prizes ready let everybody know where they can find when you are going to be live and how they plan to find you yes so you can head over to the blog the kindergartens motorsport calm and on the blog of course there are tons of ideas and resources and freebies and videos you can also click on scheduled me button at the top and that gives you a list of all of my upcoming conferences and workshops we also do a monthly live YouTube broadcast called submissions for smoggy live and you can as always the third Wednesday of every month and so we always post that on the blog and on social media so you can join us for live I'm below I've broadcast every month we're always talking about um lots of different things sometimes it's an open forum sometimes it's a more specific conversation about certain topics or certain subjects we're also all over social media we love our social media we're on Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube Pinterest and you can just search for the kindergarten smorgasbord and you will find us also if you have any questions about anything that I've talked about tonight you can always send us an email at kinder smorgy at gmail.com or reach out to us on social media we make it a point to respond to every email and question that we receive so if you have questions over there something I can help you with if you need clarification feel free to send us an email we'll be happy to help you okay is everyone ready for the prizes now Greg I think we're hearing an echo would you mind anything we just go moment yes okay what we're going to need from you is to indicate in the questions if you hear your name we need to make sure that you're still here and we will be sending you your prize via email so first we're going to pick for the one-year free subscription to ESG I first winner Yvette chambers Yvette chambers please indicate that you are here by giving us a message in the questions yep there she is okay second winner Alana joy Alana joy you are a winner of a free year of yes GI next is Katie Allen Katie Allen you are a winner of a free year yes GI we also have Monica Malta's Monica Malta's you are the winner of a ESG is 4 year now don't forget everyone on this call is going to get a downloadable from Greg's TPT store so look for that as well but now we're going to announce the grand prize winner so don't go anywhere this grand prize winner is going to get one free year of yes GI plus a $50 gift card to Greg's TPT store grand prize winner Catelynn Peters Catelynn Peters please let us know that you are here you are the grand prize winner we are so glad that you were able to join us today thank you to Greg for presenting this great information don't forget like you said to follow the follow the kindergarten Smorgasburg on all social media networks and subscribe to his blog he will be answering the specific questions that you asked today and don't forget to check your email in the next two days to find your certificate of participation a link to the recording of this webinar and Greg's pickle letters and sounds unit thank you Greg you can unmute now if you'd like thank you so much for being with us and thank you everyone for your participation thank you for having me and again thank you to everybody who joined us yes again you can email me if you have questions and I'll be writing a blog post to answer the questions that you were asking during the webinar wonderful everyone have a good night thank you

Channel: ESGI Software

Views: 1,680

Rating: 4.6190476 out of 5

Keywords: early childhood, kindergarten, assessment, centers, kindergartensmorgasboard, smorgie, first grade, webinar

Id: O-yqAn9oo7U

Length: 56min 21sec (3381 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 29 2016