Engage Your Students with Independent Centers

A few months ago, I was thinking about going back to work and wondering how I am going to manage doing so many things at once.  Right now, I am parenting, exercising, cleaning, and TpTing and feel like I can hardly handle everything.  Starting in September I will be doing all of that PLUS teaching full time!  I don't know how some of you do it, but I guess I will find out in a few months.



That thought turned into thinking about how I will manage the varying levels within my classroom.  I wanted to come up with an idea that could keep kids busy learning, without much adult support.  I wanted it to be fun and engaging.  I wanted it to be hands-on and to have immediate feedback.  

Finally, after a lot of thinking and planning, I came up with a self-checking activity and the Pin & Spin series was born!  

Now for the fun part...how it works!  
 

Before using these in your classroom, you will have to do a little bit of prep work.  All you need to do is print the cards, double sided.  I like to use cardstock and then laminate so they will be super durable.  That's it!  I told you it was a little bit of prep work!

First, your students will read the prompt in the middle of the card.  Then, they will use their clothespins to "pin" their correct answers.  

 

Next, they "spin" their card over to find out if their answers are correct.  The clothespins should match up with the correct answers on the back.  

 That is the best part of this activity!  It is self-correcting so students can use this totally independently.  Each card provides immediate feedback and students love using the clothespins to choose their answers!

 

The cards used in the pictures are from my CVC Words - A Pin & Spin Activity set.  

Would you like to try Pin & Spin in your classroom?  How about trying it for FREE?  You can find a FREE sample of my Beginning Letters Pin & Spin here.

I currently have almost 40 Pin & Spin Activities in my store!  Topics include addition, subtraction, word families, parts of speech, money, ABC order, multiplication, digraphs, food groups, fractions, life cycles, syllables, and much more!

If you have any special requests for a new Pin & Spin topic, please email me.  I will be happy to help!