Tips for Prepping and Organizing Partner Activities

If you were to visit my classroom, you would see lots of collaborative groups throughout the day.  I often like my students to work in pairs.  Since we do a good bit of training at the beginning of the year about how to work well with other students, most of the time partner work goes really well.

Working with a partner provides students with a chance to move away from their seats to work, which they love.  It provides them the opportunity to target talk about a specific skill, which I love.  And it seems to help the time move fairly quickly, which we all love.

Everyday my young learners work with partners during The Daily Five, during math centers, and during literacy centers.  Sometimes I like to put together partner activities we do as a whole group.   

Like anything else, setting up whole group partner activities requires some prep and organization on the front end.  But, once you put your materials together in a thoughtful way, you will always have that activity to use with future students.

Here is how I prep partner activities to use in a whole group setting...

First, I get a colorful set of markers.

I print half as many copies of the activity as I have students.  This year I have 22 students.  So, I print 11 copies of the matching activity that the students will complete.
After printing the activity cards, (and before I laminate or cut them) I mark on the back of each set with a different color of marker.

After I mark each set with a different color of markers, I laminate the pages.  

And yes, I laminate before I cut.  I do a lot of laminating and I do not have problems with the film peeling.  Cutting once saves me a ton of time.  (If you are cutting, laminating, and cutting again, you may want to experiment with your laminator to see if you can get away with laminating the whole page and cutting once.)

Cutting is the time consuming part.  Parent volunteers can be very helpful with this job, if you can get all your materials ready early enough to send them away for a few days.

After the activity cards are cut out, I sort them into stacks based on the marker color on the back.  This picture shows the fronts of the cards.

This is what the backs of the cards look like.  The reason I mark the cards with different colors is just in case some cards get left out, I know exactly which set they belong to.  

The last step in organizing the partner activity is to put each set of cards in a bag.  I use a large envelope to keep the cards together.  I also put in the printable recording sheet that goes along with the activity.

On the outside of the envelope, I write the name of the activity, specify that it is a partner set, and (if applicable) what packet the activity came from.

Like I said, prepping these partner activities does take a little time.  But, I love having these resources available to me.  Next year when we learn about the diphthongs AU and AW, I'll go to my literacy partner work tote, pull out this thick envelope of goodies and be ready to go.

Need a Giggle? (A Cringe Worthy Story and a FREEBIE)

I'm joining Carolyn at Kindergarten: Holding Hands and Sticking Together who is hosting her first ever linky to share favorite funny school stories.  What a fun idea!

I've been teaching for thirteen years.  Most of my time has been with little kids in first.  Little kids have some very interesting stories from home.  With my daughter starting kindergarten next year, I shutter to think what she will be saying.  Anyhow, the story I want to share is not one told to me by one of my firsties.  It is one that played out in the last few minutes of the last day before winter break during my second year teaching.

A grandmother had volunteered that morning.  She left around lunch time and ask if she could bring goodie bags back for the kids.  How nice!  Certainly you little sweet grandmother, you can bring goodie bags.  Later that day someone from the office brought a box of brown lunch sacks, stapled closed, to my class.  These were the goodie bags.  I put the box on top of a book shelf and forgot all about it.

At the end of the day, we were packing and stacking and lining up to go home.  One of my students reminded me about the box of goodie bags.  The bell rang and I hurriedly passed a bag to every student.  Most of the kids went out the door to line up in their dismissal areas, but a few stayed behind and opened their (let me remind you brown lunch sacks, stapled closed) goodie bags.

Inside was a pencil, a Hi-C juice box, and a pack on candy cigarettes.  I'm not talking the politically correct candy sticks.  The candy cigarettes that my kids had in their possession had packaging that looked like real cigarettes.

I panicked.  I grabbed my treasure chest and started offering my remaining students multiple treats from the treasure chest in exchange for the candy cigarettes.  There were no takers.  

Then one student in particular dawned on me.  We'll call her  M .  M 's mom was  v e r y  picky with what she was exposed to.  For example, she told me she really wasn't crazy about me reading Junie B. Jones to the class because Junie B. seemed disrespectful.  And now candy cigarettes were on the way home with  M .

I ran out to the car rider line, still carrying my treasure chest.  I had to find  M  and get those cigarettes.  When I finally found her she was standing on the sidewalk acting like she was smoking one.  I walked over to her and said, " M  maybe we should trade some things from the treasure chest for those cigarettes because I don't think your mom with think those are appropriate."   M  said, "That's OK.  I'll just save them for when I play dress up."  Then she stuck them in her backpack.  (gulp) 

I learned my lesson that day.  Always check goodie bags before sending them home.  But good grief, where do you even get twenty packs of real candy cigarettes (without going to some specialty shop online, which I know she did not have time to do)?

Epilogue:  I talked to M 's mom and explained everything.  She was cool.  I told my principal about it as well, just in case she got any phone calls.  I never heard anything. 

On another note . . .

I just finished my second word work unit for Teachers Pay Teachers.  It is called Blast Off with AU and AW.  It includes mini lesson ideas, literacy centers, and printable worksheets.  If you would like to check it out, you can click on the picture below.

If you would like a FREEBIE from this unit, you can click on the picture below.  

It is one in a series of sorting printables available in this packet.

Thanks for reading.  Be sure to check out the other stories at Kindergarten: Holding Hands and Sticking Together.  Better yet, link up your own funny story.

Best.