Friday, October 14, 2016

A Peek at Our Day


I frequently get asked about my daily classroom schedule, so today I'm here to share my daily schedule with you. The schedule you see above is a general overview of what our day looks like. Let me walk you through it!



9:00 - 9:15
Our district requires 30 minutes of physical activity every day, so I go ahead and knock 15 minutes of this out first thing in the morning. It gets their morning wiggles out and is also a chance to get restroom breaks out of the way. It also gives me that much needed extra time in the mornings to get activities prepped and ready to go, especially if I had meetings all morning.


9:15 - 9:30 
My students arrive in my class at 9:15. They come in and place their homework and daily behavior reports in the appropriate trays. Once everyone is seated and beginning on their morning work, our flag leader leads us in the pledge and we sing our school song, our pet keeper feeds the fish, and we view our Daily Fun Fact. Then, we complete our morning work which may look different for everyone.  




9:30 - 10:50
At 9:30 we break off into literacy rotations/centers. We have 4 groups/4 centers and each rotation/center is 20 minutes long and differentiated to meet the needs of each student. You can read more about my centers here.



10:50 - 11:20
This is when we do our "morning meeting," whole group. Our whole group consists of stating rules and goals, calendar, weather, number sense, money, and time. 


11:25 -12:15
My students go to their specials. My students have humanities/music, art, PE, and Library. This is my prep time and my aides take my students to specials. I have grades 3-5 and all of my students go to specials with 3rd graders. 



12:15 - 12:45
My students go to lunch and then get their other 15 minutes of recess. I meet them for lunch after my prep at 12:15 and have lunch with them from 12:15 - 12:30 and then take my lunch from 12:30 - 1:00. This allows me to see how my students are functioning at lunch time, work on any eating goals a student may have, and see whether or not they need more support! 



12:45 - 1:00
My students return from lunch. One of my aides reads a picture book to them and then they do one song from gonoodle.com.  



1:00 - 2:00
At 1:00, we break off into math rotations/centers. For math, I only have 3 groups/3 centers this year and each center is 20 minutes long.  


2:00 - 2:30
This is my life skills block where I also incorporate social studies, science, health, and craft time. 



2:30 - 3:10
This is classroom jobs and social time. My students complete their classroom jobs and then if they don't have any missing work (work they refused to do earlier in the day) they get to have social time. During social time, they get to play games, play with the classroom toys, do puzzles, or whatever they'd like to play.

And that's a peek at a day in The Bender Bunch classroom!

See you back on Sunday for SPEDtacular Sunday Freebies!!


3 comments:

  1. How many students and aides do you have? Sounds like your day runs pretty well.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love your schedule. My students are grades 3-5 also, but they go to specials with their gen ed classes-the same class that they attend science/social studies. It is a scheduling NIGHTMARE!!! For direct instruction, I have 4 groups of math, 4 groups of reading and 4 groups of writing, which are all on different levels. The groups are made of different grade levels, depending on their ability levels. So one reading or math group has 3rd and 4th graders, 4th and 5th graders, etc. The levels are extremely varied! One 5th grader is reading on grade level (yay!) and one 3rd grader is still learning to identify letters. It's a challenge to meet their individual needs, but differentiation is my strength. However, throw in all the behaviors and BOOM! There's my weakness! The behaviors get in the way of teaching academics. I bought your behavior tool kit to try and strengthen my behavior management skills of the major behaviors. Anyways, I love your schedule and am kind-of teacher jealous!

    jean1_brown@charleston.k12.sc.us

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh, and let me add that this scheduling nightmare only gives me ONE 40 minute planning period per week. We get 20 minutes for lunch--with our classes. Four days out of the week, I have NO breaks.

      Delete

I LOVE reading your comments, and replying! But the only way you'll get my reply is if you are a blogger and have that set up on your Blogger account, or if you come back to your comment to see if I've replied,(which is unlikely to happen). So please leave your email when you comment so that I can be sure you get my response!