Reading Centers Ideas??

[Tracy Tingles]

I just wanted to know what every one is doing for reading centers right now. Grades 3, 4, or 5. Please share with me!

[teachjam@hotmail.com]

I am taping basal reader stories for 4 to listen to, and one page leveled stories too.

Journal writing with prompts I provide.

Folder Games I made or purchased to reinforce vowel sounds, parts of speech, etc.

While I have a small group to work intensively with skills, reading aloud with them for fluency.
This gives me 4 group centers during my Reading/ Writing block of 90 min. that the class rotates around daily. Hope this helps.

[Jerry]

Students read a two paragraph passage and move to the drawing center to draw a scene that describes it in full detail.

[Unregistered]

One of my favorite things for kids to do in literacy centers is to cut interesting pictures from magazines and have students write stories about them. They also have a multi paragraph piece they need to practice for fluency each week. When they feel they are ready they tape record their reading (which I listen to on the way home or over the weekend). My class has also done a variety of vocabulary activities and spelling activities in centers. The key is introducing and modeling the centers before the kids use them.

[Unregistered]

Hi,
I teach 3rd grade. My reading centers do not have any papers to grade. I do such things as file folder games to reinforce concepts in the class. Listening to a story on tape and filling out a survey on the book, computer games, geosafari, going to the library for free read, reading Time for Kids (must be accountable for discussion). I also have the students fill out a list of the center they finished and the date. The students have a clothespin where they put for the center they are on. We model how to work at centers, how we go to centers, how we clean up centers before I even start the center program. We also rate ourselves at the end of each day by a thumbs up thumbs in middle or thumbs down on how they worked and behaved in the centers. We discuss what we did well and how we can improve. It takes time to do this practicing but it is worth it in the long run. They cannot do the same center twice during the cycle when we have centers. I also change the centers each time. I do centers during a guided reading unit in reading/writing.

Good luck!
Connie Semler
3rd Grade
Liberty Corner School
Liberty Corner, NJ

[Unregistered]

Hi! I am a 1st year teacher and I teach 3rd grade Language Arts. I do centers and guided reading with my students. Some of the centers I do are:

Pocket Chart--Here, my students practice the skill(s) for the week, such as subject-verb agreements, consonant clusters, etc. using letter and word tiles.

Games--Here, my students play Scrabble Jr., Boggle, etc.

Sources of Information--Each 9 weeks I change out the source (Dictionary, Phonebook, Encyclopedia, Thesaurus). The students look up designated words or informaiton and record the required info.

Library--The students silently read and fill out a story map on the book they read.

These are jsut some things I do that work well. I have other centers, but these are the students' favorites. Hope this helped!

Michelle

[Unregistered]

I am great need of ideas for guided reading. This is the first year to implement guided reading and I have no idea of what to expect and how to plan my centers. Please HELP me!
Thanks!
Jenn



Hi,
I teach 3rd grade. My reading centers do not have any papers to grade. I do such things as file folder games to reinforce concepts in the class. Listening to a story on tape and filling out a survey on the book, computer games, geosafari, going to the library for free read, reading Time for Kids (must be accountable for discussion). I also have the students fill out a list of the center they finished and the date. The students have a clothespin where they put for the center they are on. We model how to work at centers, how we go to centers, how we clean up centers before I even start the center program. We also rate ourselves at the end of each day by a thumbs up thumbs in middle or thumbs down on how they worked and behaved in the centers. We discuss what we did well and how we can improve. It takes time to do this practicing but it is worth it in the long run. They cannot do the same center twice during the cycle when we have centers. I also change the centers each time. I do centers during a guided reading unit in reading/writing.

Good luck!
Connie Semler
3rd Grade
Liberty Corner School
Liberty Corner, NJ