Time seems to be one of the biggest challenges for teachers. If there was more time, I could teach…Well with the winter we have had in Virginia time in the classroom has been a hot commodity. To make up for lost time, some elementary schools have had 10 minutes added on to their day. With state testing season here, what is the best way to use it? What would you do with 10 more minutes in your classroom?

This would be the perfect time for centers. If you have a student computer and interactive white board then you have two centers already. Make a few more and the students can rotate through each center each day.

Computer Center ideas

• Jefferson Lab (Math and Science-choose grade/amount of questions and receive a grade at the end)
• IQ Interactive Quizzes (released test that gives a score after each question-all grades/all content areas)
• Portaportal for grades 3-5     (if you do a search for “portaportal SOL) you will find many sites organized by grade and content area)

Interactive White Board

• create a stack of key words-one student draws the word while the others must guess it and once guess must define, name the era/event, etc
• Harvey’s Home Page (Math lessons organized by strand
• Illuminations (scroll through the games or narrow your search with the option on the left of the page)
• EdHeads (Weather and Simple Machines)
• SMART templates (scroll down and you will find them on the right)
• SMART exchange (search by topic, standard, idea of game template-such as Jeopardy)