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, you would know that I LOVE rings. I have rings of everything. Sight words, student names, numbers, letters, etc. You name it, it is on a ring. I like putting things on rings because it's convenient and they are portable. I keep rings by every whole group area, my teacher table and by our classroom door. If we ever have a minute to spare in our schedule, I grab one and we practice. I carry them in the hall and ask students quick questions while we are waiting in lines. This keeps them quiet and focused too. Double bonus!
What will you find on my quick intervention rings? First, we have a 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. Here is a preview of this set:
Click here to see more about this set.
The next set I pull 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 have these in any group area and at my teacher table for small group instruction. This is something we will do as a class EVERY day. Here are a few examples of what is included in this set:
To see more about this set, click here.
The last set I pull from is math word problems. I find this the most time consuming for myself when having to come up with a quick word problem on the fly. It always ends up like this…..Ummmmm John has two….pencils! His…. teacher gives him….four more. How many pencils does he have now? Eventually my kids get tired of John and his pencils and it seems to always take me forever to come up with that word problem (which is ridiculous in itself, ha). With this ring, I can ask my kids a word problem any time without having to think about it. They are also differentiated for higher level thinking. Here are examples of cards on this ring:
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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