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I teach for all the free stuff

Free stuff?!

I know what you're thinking, teachers don't get things for free. WRONG! Don't forget to utilize the wonderful world of Teachers Pay Teachers as well as Pinterest (duh). You can find lots of cool things on there for free! And if it isn't free... it's like $5 (your students are worth it.. trust me).

However, this post wasn't inspired from TPT. It was inspired from the fact that every year my principal gets our campus new shirts to wear to convocation and today I got mine!

It's probably my favorite part of the start of inservice because:

A) there are always the teachers who loathe that we all dress up like some sort of day camp, and I love watching them in pain (oops, that's mean. But I do).
B) My outfit is already made for the day, throw on some cute pants and shoes and you are good to go!
C) I get to add to my collection of school spirit shirts which we get to wear with JEANS every Friday of the school year. YAAAAS.

But okay, let's get to why I am really writing today. I spent some time in my classroom today. I thought about how I was going to go about teaching my kiddos in small groups this year. I began to do this more last year but not until about the last two months of school (because that was when I finally started to realize how to do it) and now I'm like, "I need to do this right away."

So I was going through all my task cards. Can I just say, I LOVE task cards. Here's a list of things I grew to love last year to have in small groups:
Task cards
expo markers
white boards
sheet protectors

I can't express to you enough how much expo markers changed my small groups. It's like they just want to write because you gave them an expo marker! I didn't even use white boards in the beginning, I just let them write directly on the table. It comes right off! Kids just erased it before going back to their seats. Also, let the kids write on the task cards. Why not? That's why it's awesome for them to be laminated.

If you don't have white boards, or if you for some reason can't laminate, then use a sheet protector! It works great too. In fact, if you put a piece of computer paper into a sheet protector... BAM! Instant white board.

So I'll end with these tips that I picked up as a new teacher last year figuring out small groups:

1. Make a list of the standards you want your kids to know (I'm from Texas, so mine are TEKS)
2. Group the kids according to which ones they need to work on. Don't do more than 5 kids! I focused on my students who absolutely were not getting it first. If I had time, I moved on to the kids who had it but could still use some practice. ( I used data from formative assessments)
3. Write them down a whole WEEK in advance. If you can do more than a week, more power to you. This way, I could call the students I needed up to the front as soon as class started and I could get all the materials out I needed for the small group that day.
4. Require that they do an informal assessment after your small group to see if there was any improvement.
5. Be as organized as possible. 

Of course with task cards and small groups on my mind, I made a set of fiction inference cards for my TpT! You can find them here!

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