Help on Reading Centers

[uconngurl82]

I am getting my master's and teaching at the same time. I have to create a list of tips and guidlines for creating centers. I am at a loss. If anyone has any tips or guidelines for creating reading centers...Please help. It can be anything from what colors to how to rotate to what are good materials to use. HELP, PLEASE!

Jen

[slopez1974]

There are many things to consider when you begin to set up your Reading/Literacy Centers. For instance, you need to consider your children's readiness for independent work. Also, your own sensitivities such as noise level that is comfortable to you, movement around the room, and quality of work you desire. After you have determined these minor details you can begin to plan more specifically.

The next thing that you will need to do is decide what types of centers you will have, what will be their purposes and how will you evaluate their progress, and how often they will meet or produce a product. Figuring all of this out is the hardest, therefore, you should make sure that you write your plan down on paper and do a walk-through of it in your mind.

After fine tuning your center concept, you can begin implementing the concept to the children. For very young children who have no concept of center time, don't expect too much. It will take them lots of time to adjust to the new idea of working/learning on their own. Older children can grasp the concept better, but they will still need to learn your style of how you want/need things to run. Always do a week's worth of run through, where the children will work, but their products may not be graded as you would when they have a complete understanding of their new jobs.

I have other ideas, you can email me for more suggestions!

[labooks]

You might want to take a look at these books.
The links go to Amazon.

Literacy Work Stations: Making Centers Work (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1571103538/learningabilitie)

Primary Literacy Centers : Making Reading and Writing Stick! (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0929895460/learningabilitie)

Hope this helps.
Betsy

Learning Abilities Books (http://www.gate.net/~labooks)

[Unregistered]

I have a poster with my three center rotations on it. Each child has a name and a spot for the name of their activity for each of the three centers. (It looks like a chart in Excel basically..) Then, in each spot, I velcro their activity on. The students know to look next to their name for their activity. The velcro part makes it real simple to change day to day.

[Unregistered]

Put phonics worksheets in plastic page protectors and have your students complete the worksheet with dry erase markers. It works great. We also string our spelling words with small letter beads, Listening centers (record your own voice or have other people, even your students record a book and listen to themselves. They will listen over and over again.)

I hope these ideas help

[Gremillion]

SLopez and LA Books had some good suggestions, I found good ideas (as well as free stuff) through Highlights magazine for children. You could use a listening center, writing center - get newsprint or light brown paper on a roll from your local school supply warehouse to motivate the students and add interest instead of regular looseleaf, reading center (classroom library), phonics center with magnetic letters and or words. There are oh, so many books you could purchase and make learning games , i.e manipulatives, for them to use. How about a book review club, where students write a mini book report and review( similar to a movie review) for others? We could be more specific with suggestions if we knew the age/grade level of your students. Good luck, I think you'll find the results of your hard work worth the effort, after you've established rules and expectations . Make sure there are fair and consistent consequences for those who do not behave appropriately because centers activities can be lots of fun for kids and therefore motivation to do the seatwork which must be done also.

[Unregistered]

I enjoyed setting up a variety of centers within my classroom. One center was changed out every 6 weeks (after they had manipulated the items beforehand). This way, they were familiar with the items and I still had some control of it. I taught my students the 1st six weeks of the school year, how to manipulate, care for the center and re-stock it. If they did not keep each center up, the center was closed down until the next 2nd six weeks period. A total of 4 to 5 centers were up and running the last six weeks of the school year with just my monitoring them. The students had mastered "running the show" themselves at this time of the school year. Please note that I also had special needs inclusion students, who were paired up with peer students. My students taught and assisted them at each center. Everyone had a grand time.

[hmsbuzz]

I am in a similar boat. I teach kindergarten with 30 students and am almost done with my masters degree. I have no aide or other adult assistance in the classroom. I don't have the energy to run around the room putting out fires, so I use technology to do my work for me. Being a 49-year-old father of 4 little girls (including 4-year-old triplets), I cannot afford to exhaust myself in this manner. I use technology to set up my centers. I begin by assigning all of the students the same assignment. As they begin the assignment, I send 3-4 students to the TV center, where, through the use of an AverKey, I post an assignment on the TV from the computer. It might be a sentence to write or some similar assignment. My listening center takes 4 more students. The overhead is used to post another assignment of the projection screen. Finally, I work with 3-4 students. We rotate around with any student finishing early going back to their seat and work on the original assignment.

[teachjam]

I am getting my master's and teaching at the same time. I have to create a list of tips and guidlines for creating centers. I am at a loss. If anyone has any tips or guidelines for creating reading centers...Please help. It can be anything from what colors to how to rotate to what are good materials to use. HELP, PLEASE!

Jen

I found a GREAT site at http://www.mspowell.com with NUMEROUS ideas and center ideas as well. Good luck.

[alanfoo]

You can try this site www.visualgram.com. It has tools for readings linked to a smart dictionary as well as a tool for simple instant creation of digital tutorials and questionnaires.

Solves most of problems facing schools trying to use computers in education.

regards
alan

[estella]

I need information on how to set a first grade classroom.