Release Time-Day One

As I approach my second day of release time, I am very excited, especially to be releasing the same teacher again! During my first day of release time, I was placed with Angie Tate at North Elementary. She is a third grade teacher. I really liked the way that she had her classroom set up. She has her students placed in groups of four to five students/desks. I believe that she does this to have a large open area and mat for oral reading time.

My favorite thing about her classroom and teaching strategies was that of her routine for stations. For each student, there is a folder that travels with them to each station. I find this to be very nice for tracking students' work without having to collect it everyday and have mounds of paperwork. Also, I believe that she uses this system to keep track of which stations various groups have been to during the week and which ones that they need to go to in the event that there would be any confusion.

Lastly, I really liked the system that Mrs. Tate used for the station rotation. She has note cards with all of the students' names on a card and then a magnet is glued to the back. She groups the students together and sticks the magnets on the board writing that group's rotation next to it. She does this for each group. Also, in the groups, she uses a post-it to symbolize who will be the group leader for the day's stations.

I really like this teaching strategy for reading and language arts instruction relating to ability levels. This is something that I would look into using and molding into my own system in my future classroom.