Guided Groups {Where it Happens}

My small group area is where I spend the most time sitting during the day!  I am hardly ever sitting, but when I’m working with a group of kiddos, my focus is on them. 

When I am working with a group or individual child, I turn on my “ghost light.”  The ghost doesn’t have any significance, my daughter had it for Halloween one year, and I grabbed it! The kids know that when it is on they can’t interrupt me!

Here is my table where I work with kids.  I try to keep everything that I might need close.

I adore this easel.  It has a magnetic dry erase front and little pockets on the back that I can shove all sorts of goodies in.  It’s certainly not neat and tidy in this area, but it’s where everything goes down! It’s a busy place!  I keep pencils, mini-fly swatters, post-its, pointers, dry erase boards….just about everything right in this spot.

Here is what’s inside those little drawers:

       

I also have small letter tiles available.  I use these a lot for CVC work or for whole class word building activities. It was a set of letters that I got at a teacher supply store in the bulletin board section – I really want to say that it was a Fountas and Pinnell set, but I can’t remember!  They are about 2” square.

I keep running record papers and my nifty Fountas and Pinnell running record calculator handy as well.  This shelf is to the left of my table.  I keep each groups books/lessons/activities in the colored buckets on the top shelf.  There are leveled books on the 2nd shelf, some “just for fun” books that the children can choose for their book baskets on the 3rd shelf, and more decodable readers, and my science/social studies/math books on the bottom shelf.

   

I also have a large selection of Lakeshore center activities that I will pull out.  Those are in a shelf to the right of my table.   

I’ll share more later of how I might run a guided group!