Well, I've been working on a way to reduce the stress of changing out what goes in my guided reading group area. I have bins that match my groups for their leveled readers, but I was having trouble getting activities prepared each week, and putting them away after. I think I finally created something that will help with this problem.
I've been working on a Guided Reading Toolbox to use in small groups. I bought a tower with 10 drawers, labeled each drawer with a reading component (phonemic awareness, letter/sound correspondence, fluency, etc.), then filled the drawers with activities that matched that component. Each group has different needs, so I use the drawers that match that group. The drawers are in order from those with Intervention activities, such as flash cards with letters and sounds, to much more in- depth text connectivity activities at the bottom. This makes it easy to find what I need, quickly.
I've been using this system for about 3 months, now, and I really like it! Here are some pictures of what I'm using.
