Planning student interventions can be stressful. Time restraints, multiple needs, and limited resources make interventions a daunting task. Today we are sharing a few quick interventions that are purposeful and easily differentiated.
If you ever visited my classroom when I taught, you would know that I LOVE rings. I had rings of everything. Sight words, student names, numbers, letters, etc. You name it, it is on a ring. I liked putting things on rings because they were convenient and portable. I kept rings by every whole group area, my teacher table, and by our classroom door. If we ever had a minute to spare in our schedule, I grabbed one and we practiced. I carried them in the hall and asked students quick questions while we were waiting in lines. This kept them quiet and focused, too. Double bonus!
What would you find on my quick intervention rings? First, my phonological and phonemic awareness set. When I first created this set, I printed out the entire set. I divided each section up and created four rings with the various objectives. I gave each teacher on my team a ring. At the end of each month, we would rotate the rings. I found this much easier and definitely more affordable when it came to printing and laminating to do it this way.
Each day we would practice a concept and when I pulled small groups, I would use these cards to work on specific skills students were struggling with mastering. I don’t know about you but I struggle with coming up with examples on the spot. With these cards, I don’t have to think which means we have more practice time.
Click here to see more about this set.
The next set I pulled is my math interventions set. If you take five minutes throughout the day to practice these cards, it will help your students be more prepared for state tests and build math fluency with the ability to recall quickly. We want to expose children with every way that they will see numbers. I want them to see six subitizing dots and immediately know that the answer is six. This takes practice, though. Again, I kept these in any group area and at my teacher table for small group instruction. This is something we did as a class EVERY day.
To see more about this set, click here.
The last set I pulled from is math word problems. The most time consuming activity for myself was when I had to come up with a quick word problem on the fly. It always ended up like this…..”Ummmmm John has two….pencils! His…. teacher gives him….four more. How many pencils does he have now?” Eventually my kids got tired of John and his pencils, and it seemed to always take me forever to come up with that word problem (which is ridiculous in itself, ha). With this ring, I could ask my kids a word problem any time without having to think about it. They are also differentiated for higher level thinking.
To see more of this set, click here.
Prepping these rings takes a little bit of time but once they are done, you will have them to use year after year. By creating a system that provides quick interventions and a daily review for your students, you will increase their mastery in no time. You may only use your rings for five minutes each day, but when you consider that you are adding 100 minutes a month of quick interventions, that is time well spent. Time is precious in a kindergarten classroom and so is your sanity. Put your interventions on a ring and teach on!
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