Workshop Wednesday: Organization Idea

This week's topic for Jivey's linky is all about how reading workshop can be organized.


As one of the special education teachers in an inclusion school, most of my day is spent coteaching. The paras that I work with also are moving from room to room to offer support to students throughout the day. As such, I feel that our day is slightly unique and can provide more opportunities for smaller groups and differentiation. As such, things change constantly, luckily I work with a flexible staff who accommodates for the students very well.

In reading, we alternate the format of the class about every 6 weeks or so to keep things fresh and new. The last big format utilized centers. The class I coteach in has about 15 students and 4 adults in the room due to the specific needs of the children who are in the room. Groups were divided heterogeneously. I personally feel that inclusion works because students on IEPs can work along with peers, or at least see peers as models, so whenever possible grouping choices also try and reflect that.

Each group rotation lasted just under 20 minutes. The classroom teacher worked on reading skills. The two paras took a group that was reading independently, and would move around from student to student throughout the week to read with each child. The final group worked with me and we read through a novel and worked on projects tied to that novel study. I'm a huge fan of sticky notes, so when/if notes were needed, I recorded them on a sticky note to remember for later.
I saw an idea on Pinterest once that I liked and tried to implement. This quick/easy idea utilized a folder with divided sections and sticky notes. This works great for keeping notes in the classes I'm actually working in. With our small group rotations, if I noticed a particular strength/weakness I'd jot a quick note and quickly put it in the folder. Everything was already at my small group table and it worked quite well. (I tried to do something similar with IEP goals, it didn't work quite so well, but I made something that worked well to record progress on those.)



4 comments

  1. I love sticky notes too! :) That file folder idea looks great. Thanks so much for linking up!
    Jivey
    ideas by jivey


    ReplyDelete
  2. I love sticky notes too! (Is there an echo in here?) I think I may have seen the folder idea on pinterest too. I need to do something to do better about organizing myself. Not sure what it will be yet. That's why I'm reading everyone else's ideas!

    Amanda
    Collaboration Cuties

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  3. I would love to hear about what you have figured out to track IEP goals if you are willing to share! I find that tracking behaviors on specific instruction in the curriculum is one thing but sometimes IEP goals can be so long term or potentially disconnected from the curriculum that it's harder to keep those at the forefront and track on a regular basis.

    Polka Dots & Teaching Tots

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  4. Man I love linky parties- so many great ideas. I love how simple this is- make a one off template with a folder with the names so you don't have to name all of the notes as you go. I am definitely going to do this. I'm your latest follower too!

    x Serena x
    Magic Mistakes & Mayhem

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