What other job...

...would find its employee in her office at 5:45am, sitting at her computer, wearing an over sized sweatshirt and ball cap (large Micky D's sweet tea for energy) writing plans for someone to come in, take her place for the day because her child was up at 3am throwing up? I'm sure you have all heard/felt it before...I swear teachers are the only ones that have to do this! Of course my child gets sick on the week that my husband is actually on OUR schedule and in training (therefore can't take off), and I leave my work laptop at school the night before!

To top it off...she is perfectly fine today, no fever, not throwing up, nothing...of course. But I would not have felt comfortable taking my child to day care the next day when she was up at 3am puking.

Well you guys are the lucky ones because I have been up since 3am and checking things off my "to do" list. I am sure I'll crash any minute now, but until then I have pictures and links of my March Madness Tubs.

So a teacher friend found this blog: Teaching in Room 6 she posted (which is in the link to her blog) how she does Test Prep Stations (you may want to read the post first, to then read how I adapted it). I took it and RAN with it! My students are already familiar with Guided Reading and Guided Math, so transitioning them to stations/centers was not difficult. They actually liked the idea of being able to choose their own station and that they had most of the time to work on whatever activity they chose.

The thing I loved the MOST from Teaching in Room 6 post was the task cards(unseen001)!!! I already do something similar in both Guided Math and Guided Reading as a center but had used A TON of 3rd Grade Gridiron's "packets" LOVE her stuff on TPT. So finding these task cards was like hitting the lottery! I will admit it is a little hard to navigate, I felt like I kept having to click, then click this link again, and so on. But it is worth it. You also have to sign up (for free) with ProTeacher, but again so much stuff in these little task cards!

So here is how I set my March Madness Tubs up (I sort of took the usual Guided Math set up and "tweaked" it a little)

 

Tubs on the left are Math and the ones on the right are LA. I used a di-cut circle and vinyl numbers (went ahead and made 6 of them for each subject). 

 Close up of the tubs

This week I chose to only use 4 tubs (stations). 

They are as follows:

Math

• Tub 1: Measurement Task Cards (found on TPT..a little while ago)
• Tub 2: Coach Books (CRCT prep books)
• Tub 3: Measurement, Geometry, and Patterns packets from 3rd Grade Gridiron
• Tub 4: Elapsed Time and Word Problem Task Cards (from the ProTeacher link)

LA

• Tub 1: Kidsville Newspaper WS (made and posted in previous post, by me)
• Tub 2: Two sets of Reading Comprehension Task Cards (ProTeacher again)
• Tub 3: Coach Books (CRCT prep books)
• Tub 4: Vocabulary Building and Author's Purpose Task Cards (ProTeacher)

My students get to sign up, using a simple chart/table. They can choose one tub a day and then on Friday I will let me work on completing things they may need to complete. They have to work the entire time, if they finish early they may read or work on unfinished work, but may not go to another tub. If they don't finish I have put an envelope in each tub that says: I'm still working (pics following). If they finish they turn it in to their complete folders (regular classroom management procedure). During this time I am also seeing one or two small groups (just call them over) and working on weak skills that have been identified through our tons of benchmarking.

I chose to use the task cards by dividing them up into sets. That way more than one student can be working on the same task cards at one time and I'm not having to make doubles (double the work). I made a simple worksheet for each group of task cards, they are just divided into sets and numbered so the kids can write their answers down. This also helps for when they start with Set 2 of the cards and the first number card may be 11, they know where to write the answer. I am sure there are many many different ways you can use these cards.

Here are a few more close ups of my tubs

 

I'll post my sign up sheet, envelope label for still working, and an example of my WS where they record their answers soon...they are saved on my hard drive at school (of course). I hope I was able to give you a few ideas and maybe will help break up some of that mundane test prep.

ENJOY!
~Jessica