Cramming It All In: Full Day Schedule in Kindergarten

Are you having trouble finalizing your schedule? Too many things to cram in to every day? I hear you! Every year this is probably one of the hardest things for me to figure out, so I want to share how I fit everything I need to teach into every day.

Here is a peek at what my weekly schedule looked like my last year in the classroom:

Now let me break that down for you just a little bit...

AM Routines/WTW Sort

The first thing my kiddos do every day is pretty typical. They hang up their things, bring in their folder, hand in any notes/homework, pick their lunch and have a seat.  After that I used to have morning work printables at their tables to work on but then we started using Words Their Way and I had to figure out how to fit this program into our day. My students get a new sort every Monday during our literacy block so Mondays are the only morning that they have a typical worksheet for morning work. Every other day they work on their word sort. (Tuesday: Cut & Sort, Wednesday: Sort again, Thursday: Sort & Write, Friday: Sort & Glue in journals) If they finish early they read books quietly.

Intervention

Then we have a school wide intervention time. This is the time that we really get to focus on our RTI students. Because this intervention time is school wide, our specialists, educational assisstants, SLPs etc are all able to help. This makes it possible for the students with the highest level of need to be in smaller groups, while students not in need of intervention are able to work with specialists in larger groups on enrichment activities.

Writing Workshop

We follow Lucy Calkins Units of Study for Writing so this one is pretty set each day. I do use individual goal setting with my students as well.  You can read more about that here.

Math

Everyday we start our math block with this awesome calendar journal from Growing Kinders. Then we complete a daily math journal from my math journal pack here:

Then my students work in small group with me, or on one of our math centers.

Daily 5

I use the Daily 5 model for our literacy block and I have to say it is one my favorite times of the day.  My students are always nice and calm during Daily 5 which is why I moved literacy to the afternoons.  Math centers always got so crazy when students were all wound up from lunch and recess, so moving them to the morning was also a great decision.  

Inquiry

Our district was moving towards an inquiry based approach to teaching in the content areas which I loved, but still had to put my kindergarten spin on it.  I always taught thematically.  I enjoyed it, the kids enjoyed it, so I tried to find a way to make that work with the inquiry model.  Here are the themes I used.

Read Aloud

I always end the day with a read aloud.  As students pack up their bags and get ready to go, I begin reading.  This helps quiet students down so my room doesn't turn into a zoo.  It also gives me something purposeful to do for the last few minutes while students are being picked up for buses, or after school programs. I try to pick a chapter book that relates to the season or themes we are learning about. I choose frog and toad at the beginning of the year so that students get used to the routine with shorter chapters that often have a few pictures to share.  Later in the year I read Charlotte's web, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, etc.

Hopefully this was helpful to you in some way. I know I am always curious to see how other teachers structure their day, and usually get ideas for tweaking my own schedule as well.  Happy planning friends!