How I Organize My Guided Reading Supplies using an IKEA Raskog cart

When I saw the Raskog cart at IKEA a few years ago, I told myself I HAD to have it... if I could come up with a reason to use it!  Finally, I came up with a great reason to use it- to store my guided reading supplies!

First of all, let me just tell you how well made this cart is.  It was easy to put together, and it is very sturdy.  It doesn't wobble at all.  And the wheels are very smooth, so it is easy to pull it out to use it and roll back when I'm finished.  So I'm 100% thrilled that I purchased it, and I'm looking for a reason to purchase a second one.

The Raskog cart has 3 tiers, and they hold a ton of stuff!  The only things I don't have on my cart are my Guided Reading books and my big container of magnetic letters.   I have a separate bookshelf for my Guided Reading books.

So... on to the cart!  The top tier holds the stuff I tend to use the most often.  It has my Guided Reading binder which contains my Running Records, letter ID assessment forms, and group information.  In the toolbag, which used to sit on my desk, I have various other supplies for teaching reading.  (This toolbag is seriously the best- I have one at home for my tools too!  It comes in several other colors, including pink, if you're into that.)

1.  Guided Reading Binder- I keep my Guided Reading plans in a binder, separate from my regular lesson plans.  Each group has their own tab with their lessons.  I also keep running record sheets, letter ID assessments, and other stuff there as well.  It tucks there nicely next to the toolbox.

2.  Phonics Dance song- We use a program called the Phonics Dance, and I use my Guided Reading time to practice the Phonics Dance.  At the beginning of the year, I do it with all the students, and later in the year, I use it with my struggling students who need extra practice with their sounds.  This is also something they can do independently while I do a running record.

3.  Timer/Clock- My classroom clock is behind where I sit, so having a clock is handy.  I also use the timer to make sure I keep my groups within 15-20 minutes each.  And yes, I took that picture at 7:31pm. 

4.  Dry Erase Markers- I use these to let the students practice writing words on my dry erase boards.  

5.  Magnifying Glasses- We use these for finding words, sounds, or chunks in our books.  It makes it much more fun because they feel like detectives.  

6.  Sight Word Flashcards- I keep these handy on a ring.  We practice our sight words first whenever we come to the table.  

7.  Pointers- I have a variety of fun pointers that we use for finding words, sounds, or chunks.  I like to mix it up.  The kids love the different ways they can look through their books for different things.  

Inside the toolbox, I have some other items that I like to keep handy.  

1. and 5. Dry Erase Boards and Erasers- I love the smaller dry erase boards.  They came from the Target Dollar Spot several years ago, but I've seen them since I purchased these.  The dry erase erasers also came from Target.  They are usually available around back to school.

  2.  Reading Strategy cards.  These have a different reading strategy on each card that I can display when I am teaching them a new strategy.  I printed these 4 to a page so they are small.  

3.  Alphabet Flashcards-  I keep these handy for all students at the beginning of the year, and I taper them off as we go.  We use them to practice letter recognition and sound recognition.  

4.  Pointer fingers- These are especially helpful at the beginning of the year, because it helps the students remember to use their finger and point to each word.  

6.  We use Slinkies for breaking and stretching out words.  We s-t-r-e-t-c-h out those words and use the Slinkies to help.  

My toolbox has little side pockets that are great for holding cards. 

1.  Oddity Task Cards- These are a quick and easy way to help my students with phonemic awareness and sound discrimination.  The ones you see are Beginning Sounds, but I also have Rhyming Words, Middle Sounds, and Ending Sounds as well.  I switch them out as needed throughout the year.  

2.  Word Attack Strategy bookmarks- Once we've learned a few strategies, I use these with my students so they can try using more than one strategy.  We go over which strategies we've already learned and they can reference it while reading.

3.  Elkonin boxes-  These are great for breaking and segmenting sounds.

The BEST thing about the Raskog cart is that it has 2 more tiers for lots of Guided Reading materials!

1.  Glue Sticks- I use these if we do printable sorts, sight word scramble pages, etc...  

2.  Retelling gloves and strings- We use these for retelling stories after we've read them.  

3.  Timers- I use these to do quick activities.  One activity my students love is where they have one minute to write as many words as they can.  

4.  Cookie Sheets- I bought these small cookie sheets at Ollie's.  They are great for doing a sight word mix and fix activity.  I can put the letters they need on the cookie sheet and hand it to the student.  The magnetic letters stay on the cookie sheet and can be passed back to me easily.

5.  Smarties- I give Smarties as a treat when a student does a great job.  I call them "Smarties for my Smarties" and I hand out a few whenever a student or a group does a great job.  

6.  Scentos Markers, because... why not?  

7.  Pencils and erasers are great for writing activities that we do in my small groups

1-4.  This is something I had brand new this school year, and I absolutely loved it.  I made different cards for each sound that I teach, and organized them in library pockets.  Whenever we are working on a sound, or they need a review, I can pull out the cards I need and we can do an impromptu sort.  

5. M&Ms- I keep these as a treat for a group that does a great job.  They are also great for using with Elkonin boxes.

6.  Erasers- I have a bucket full of small erasers that I keep at my table.  I use these for Elkonin boxes.  They slide the erasers into the boxes to blend the sounds together.  I switch these out with the seasons, so sometimes they are pumpkins, or snowmen, or hearts!

So that's how I organize most of my Guided Reading Materials on one handy cart!

Apparently IKEA doesn't sell the turquoise RASKOG cart anymore (tear), but they do carry it in a beige, a redish-brown, and black.  There are also several other carts that would work if you really have your heart set on blue, like I did.  I've also heard that other stores carry similar carts.  Or you could purchase one of the IKEA carts and paint it to whichever color your heart desires.

Here are a few different options from Amazon that aren't too expensive.

And this one from Michaels is also an option!

I hope this post helped any of you who are struggling with keeping your guided reading materials organized and accessible!  Having so much necessary stuff is a struggle, but it helps to have everything at your fingertips so that you can get your groups running and ready to go quickly!

All about Centers!

An important component of Guided Reading is the independent practice that your students should be doing while you are teaching!  It is so important to create a classroom climate where the students can work independently, get help from friends of they need it, and stay busy without interrupting the important learning going on at the guided reading table!  I like to use centers to give my students independent practice with skills we have been working on, while giving myself the chance to focus on teaching my students how to read.

If you missed it, I wrote about how I organize guided reading in my classroom here.

I feel like my center rotation is looks like the biggest mess ever to the untrained eye! :-)  However, my students and I are pros now!  We do 4 rotations a day.  The first rotation is only 10 minutes due to time constraints.  4 of my groups do "Read to Self" or "Read to Someone" (when I'm feeling generous!), and I meet with my highest group that are reading at a DRA level 18.  I only meet with them briefly and read with them or check their work from the day before, and then they go off and work by themselves during their "Reading Response" rotation.  The rest of the rotations are 20 minutes each.

I group my students heterogeneously, so they don't go to the same reading group with students from their center group.  As a result, at the most, there are only 3 students in a center at a time, which helps keep things calm!  I have small flower clips that I put next to the center the groups are going to for that day (not pictured).  The red chart is the rotation for each "round", and the blue and green chart are the center rotation.  The numbers are the group numbers.  It works for me, but I miss the simple chart I used a few years ago!

I love the idea of using choice with the students, a la Daily 5, but that's not something I feel this group can handle.  I used it 2 years ago and loved it, but there are too many rotations and too much going on that I don't feel like I can use it this year.  Maybe later in the year. :-/

I mentioned in my post about guided reading that I think that organization is so important when it comes to guided reading, and I think the same is true about centers!  It is important to have everything your students need easily accessible to them so they aren't interrupting you asking you where to get a glue stick or how to do an activity.  I have a bin for my word work and writing centers, and I keep all the materials in the bins.  Writing is read, and word work is green.  They take the red bin to the red table, and green bin to the green table, so there is no confusion there.  I purchased these bins at Target in the Dollar Spot a few years ago, I believe, but Michaels has something similar.  Or at least they did.


Right now, I only have 1 activity in the bin that all the students will do.  However, as the year goes on, I will differentiate the activities and have different versions of an activity, or 2 different activities, depending on the needs of my students.  When this happens, I usually use folders to keep the materials in, and I just put the folders in the bin instead.

I also keep a copy of the "I Can" statement on the center as well.  This way, if somebody were to walk into my room, they would be able to see what skill the students are working on.  The skill doesn't always match the one I have posted on my "I Can" board because these skills are review or independent practice of skills the students have mastered/almost mastered.  So this allows them to see that they are working on a particular standard without having to stop and ask me!  I started doing this last year.  I just typed them up and laminated them and posted them to the center bin with a ring, but this year, I printed out my adorable Visual "I Can" Statements 4 to a page, laminated them, and hang them on a ring.  (Does anybody need instructions on how to do this?  It's super easy!)  When I'm not using them, the rest of them are hanging on a ring near my guided reading table, so it is easy to find a the right standard and switch them out.  So far, so good!

I have 5 centers in my room:  Read to Someone, computer, Listen to Reading, Word Work, and Writing.  I also do Read to Self with all of the class at the same time while I'm working with my high group, and Reading Response.  I have one group that does not go to centers at all.  Instead, they meet with the ECE teacher and myself, and then they get on the computer to do a program called Successmaker during the last rotation for an intervention.

Reading Response and Writing are 2 different centers.  Reading Response is where the students respond to the text they read during their guided reading group.  They may do something with vocabulary, answer a question, practice sequencing the story, or something else with their guided reading book.  Writing is where they respond to the book we read as a class during Shared Reading.  For example, the week after we read Pumpkin Pumpkin and Growing Pumpkins during Shared Reading, the students had to sequence the life cycle of a pumpkin in a little flip book and write the steps.  They had to use vocabulary from the book we read, such as the word "sprout".  The papers, flip books, scissors, and glue are all there.  Pencils and crayons are already on the table.

My word work activity is always a review of a skill we've been working on or something they should be able to do independently.  I like to have lots of varied activities for the students to participate in.  Sometimes it's a simple "Spin and Spell" activity where they blend words and determine if they are real words or nonsense words.  I've done sentence scrambles, sorts, and a few other different types of activities.  I like sorts the best, I must say!  They are easy to do, and the students can do them pretty independently.

This past week, I used a syllable sort from my fall unit.  I loved watching my students work together on the activity!  Look at these cuties working hard!  I actually got up to take their picture because they were working hard!  They weren't posing for me at all!  And look at those readers in the background!  SO PROUD!  (Please ignore the overturned chair though- one of my friends had a "moment" and had to leave the classroom for awhile.  So the chair was waiting for him to come back and fix it.  We've got to learn to fix our mistakes, you know!)

A favorite center in the classroom is Listen to Reading.  I don't have a typical listening center in my room.  When I taught Kindergarten, I had the typical tape player with 3-4 pairs of headphones and the tapes.  When I moved to 1st grade 3 years ago, I wasn't allowed to take the listening center with me.  For the first year I was in first, I used the computers we had in the room (2 at the time) for the listening center.

Then last year, I wrote up a Donors Choose project and received 4 iPods for my room.  They are AWESOME.  The 4 iPods are iPod shuffles, and I chose to get 4 different colors for easy identification!  They are super small, so I have the students keep them in a bag I got from the scrapbooking section of Michaels.  It's the small black bag to the left.  Each of the compartments is color coded to match the color of the iPod, so the students know where to put the iPods when they are finished.  I can easily check to see if the iPods were put back where they belong as well.  The books for each iPod are in canvas bags that are also color coded to match the iPod.  There are 4 bags with a different color rick rack.  The student can grab the bag, which also has the headphones in it, and an iPod, and find a spot in the room to sit.  You can see one of my students following along with Corduroy on the iPod!  The best part is that I can purchase CDs from Scholastic, rip them to my computer, and sync them to the iPods.  I only have to buy 1 CD, but I can purchase several copies of a book, or I can put different stories on different iPods.  I can easily change the books with the seasons, books we've read as a class, etc...   I could do an entire blog post on my Listen to Reading center, so I'll shut up now. :-)

We also received 6 Chromebooks from Donors Choose last year, so I use these computers for my Computer center.  I built the little bench they are sitting on.  The other computers (which are on the other side of the room) are used for Successmaker.  These don't run Successmaker (the Chrome OS doesn't run Java) so the students get on Starfall.  I'm looking for new sites for the students to get on.  I have used Scootpad in the past, but I would like something a little more kid friendly.  Any suggestions?

The students also need a place to store their own materials!  Completed or uncompleted work, their center notebook, their book choices... enter book boxes!  I purchase these each year from IKEA because they are so cheap!  I give each student their book box, and it is a big deal to be able to decorate them with markers.  I usually put their pictures on them as well.  Then I reinforce them with packing tape or contact paper on the bottoms, and teach the students to use them appropriately!  I took this picture awhile ago, so there were no books in them yet!  The students can choose a few books from the classroom library to keep in their book boxes.  We switch them out every few weeks.  At the end of the year, I let the students keep their book boxes and take them home.

I hope you found this post informative!  I am glad I was able to share a bit about how I run centers in my classroom.  If you have any questions or want to learn more, let me know, and I'll be happy to share!

How I Organize Guided Reading in my Classroom

Guided Reading used to be one of my favorite things to teach.  While my experience with reading last year kind of ruined that for me, I am trying to learn to love it again.  I recently received my Masters in Education with a concentration in reading, if that tells you how much I love reading and teaching reading.  I love being able to work in small groups with my students.  I feel like I get to know them so much better, and I love getting to know my students as readers and writers during Guided Reading.  Plus, the independent work gives the students the opportunity to work on their own and it's nice to see students complete an activity without me hovering over them. :-)

I feel like a MAJOR component of Guided Reading is organization.  You MUST be organized if you want to be an effective teacher, but this is even more important when you are teaching Guided Reading groups.  You must have lesson plans that are laid out and targeted to the skills your students need. There is so much to Guided Reading, and it is so important to get it right!  There are some really great books out there to help guide you if you are struggling with Guided Reading.  A few I really like are Making the Most of Small Groups by Debbie Miller and The Next Step in Guided Reading by Jan Richardson.  If you aren't familiar with either of these books, you should be!

This is how I organize my Guided Reading in my classroom.

At my table, I like to have all of my materials organized and at my fingertips.  This allows me to maximize my 20 minutes with each group so that we get everything accomplished!  I have a basket near my table that has most of the materials I will need in it.  Everything is right where I need it, and the students know where things are too.  I can easily lift it up and move it to my table if I need something from it.

In my basket, I have a ton of different materials.  Some of them are self explanatory, such as the timer and whiteboards.  I also have a sand timer that is 1 minute, so I can use it for little sight word quizzes or to time a student for fluency.  The strategy bookmarks help remind the students to use their strategies to figure out unknown words.  I also keep reading response prompt cards at my table for a quick reference for me, and it allows them to have something to copy from.  The blend cards are to practice our blend sounds.  I simply hold up the card, and the students can say the sound or give me some words that start with that sound.  The magnifying glasses are for finding chunks we know in words.  The textured paint chips my have you scratching your head.  I have had students with poor motor skills, so I write a letter on the card and allow them to trace it.  Since they are textured, it's like using sandpaper- but these were free!  I got them from Lowes a few years ago.  I wrote a post on how I made and have used the reading response gloves here.

Reading also needs to be fun, so sometimes I pull out these fun materials, both in guided reading groups or during whole group lessons.  The glasses remind us to look through the whole world when reading, or when we are looking for particular words or sounds or whatever.  I popped the lenses out of a ton of $1 Target kids sunglasses, and I have one for each student.  The pointers are for 1-1 matching.  I have smaller pencil pointers that look like the larger pointers I have.  I use the highlighters for highlighting words or chunks.  Sometimes we use these whole group as well.

Most of these materials are kept on a bookshelf beside my table.  Each group has a basket that holds the materials they will need for each day.  I teach 4 groups a day, and our ECE teacher teaches the other group.  We switch every 6 weeks or so, and then I get to meet with the other group I hadn't been meeting with.  We both meet with the lowest group, so they get 2 groups a day.

Inside each basket holds the book they are reading, familiar books that they can re-read for fluency, graphic organizers or reading response prompts, and sometimes there are other materials that I keep in there as well. I keep magnetic letters handy in a compartmentalized box that slides next to Group 5's crate.  I also keep extra whiteboard markers and crayons here as well, as I sometimes have students work on small projects at my table and they need crayons or pencils.  It is a lot of stuff to keep track of, but having it handy and organized really helps!

  The students love coming to "my table" each day and working on reading!  They are great kids, and I am loving working with them!  4 of my students receive Reading Recovery as an intervention, and I love watching how much they have grown each week!  I do running records on one student in each group each day, and on Fridays, I do sight word assessments.  I also check the students center work for the week and give them a grade.  This keeps them accountable for the work they are doing.

I love my kidney table.  It allows me to get close to my students while still giving them room to work.  I keep just a few things on my table (most days!):  

1. My guided reading binder, which holds my lesson plans, copies of graphic organizers, running record forms, etc...  I need a bigger binder!  

2.  A pocket chart that holds the "I Can" statements we are working on, vocabulary words from the book, and any sight words we are working on.  I can change it out easily for each group, or prepare it for 2 groups and turn it around.  There is another small crate inside that holds the "I Can" statements, sentence strips to write vocabulary words and sight words, and markers to do the writing.  I created the "I Can" statements by printing my Visual "I Can" Statements 2 to a page. They can also be printed 4 to a page, and I use those in my centers. :-)

The students sit on the stools I made from 5 gallon buckets.  I like them, because they hold supplies, and they force the students to sit up straight!  I have learned that the buckets should stay full so they are heavier and harder to move!  (Most of them are, but I have 1-2 that are empty or close to empty.)  I have 6 stools, and my largest group has 6 students in it, though that is getting ready to change!  YAY!  I have a range of students who are reading at a 3/4 to a group of students who are working at a level 16/18.  I like having a range of readers in my room.  It allows me to diversify my lessons a bit.  It's nice being able to work with a group of students I have to challenge, but sometimes it's nice that I don't have to come up with challenging activities for 5 different groups of kids!  And then I'm not stuck reading the same books over and over again!

I hope this post about how I run guided reading groups was helpful to at least some of you!  Please comment and let me know if you have any questions or found anything helpful.  I will be back soon with a post on how I run centers in my room!