A wild hair

After blog stalking all summer and then starting my own blog, I have seen so many great things going on in classrooms and have changed a lot of the things that I'm doing. I am seeing a lot of success from these changes. The biggest thing I've implemented this year is slowly introducing Daily 5. I've really focused on just Read to self since January. My kids have built up their stamina to 15 minutes. They could probably go a little longer but that's about all I have time for. Last week I took them to the library to allow them to pick out 2 books for their book bags. We discussed a little bit about how to choose a book. I hope to introduce the IPICK chart this coming week. Today I introduced my kids to read to someone. It needs some work but they seemed to be excited about it and doing what they were suppose to be doing. My ultimate goal is to be able to fully implement Daily 5 next year when I have my kids for first grade.
I've been doing literacy centers this year but I get overwhelmed trying to fit it all in and trying to figure out what they are going to do each week. I really want my instruction to be more small group and less whole group. I want to implement math stations as well. So last week I got a wild hair that I would rework all that I've been doing this year.  I'm starting small.
This week my students only have 5 centers to go to. They are stamping, reading, computer, games, and writing. I then added a 15 minute block of time for math stations. I had every intention of starting this on Monday but it just didn't happen. I couldn't get my mind around what I want to do before leaving school on Friday and then Monday I couldn't get up early enough to get it going. So today, Wednesday we did some math stations for the first time. The kids loved having that time to practice some math. (I need to add a disclaimer. I haven't read the Debbie Diller book yet. It's been on my list for a while but I just haven't had the time. Hoping to get to it this summer.) When we finished our time, we discussed what kind of math we were practicing so they realized that it wasn't just about playing games. This is going to be a slow process of getting it all together and implementing it. But with the goal of having it ready to go by the time we start First grade and starting the school year with Daily 5 and math workstations, I think it's manageable.

So I created some new signs for my centers and math stations. The frames are from Graphics from the Pond. I've included numbers 1-8 and then some for literacy stations. I wanted them to be a little more uniform. If you can use them, please leave me some comment love. Math Station Card Have you ever completely changed things in the middle of the year or really almost at the end of the year? I'd love to hear about your experiences.