centers-LONG!!

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centers-LONG!!
By nic1

I have a mixed approach on centers. I am assuming you will break your centers up in to math and literacy... if not you can adjust according to your schedule.

For me, my centers begin slowly at the first of the
year. We are expected to begin centers before the kids totally get it.... so, my early centers teach the routines of the rotation and are based loosely on what they will learn to do at each location as the year progresses. Mostly they are artsy at first or involve very hands-on materials that they should be familiar with using. I have 5 must-do centers... one being my group. After the

work is completed at the must do center they move to an independent center (listening, games, reading center, computer etc.).

My must do centers include an art center that focuses on our phonics skill early in the year and later, include pocket chart art projects that they read and complete alone. I also have a pocket chart center,which is where they do a bunch of different things... sort pictures based on sounds and phonemic awareness activities we are working on, playing matching games in a pocket chart, putting our poem of the week back together etc. My working with words center is where they begin with activities using the names of the students in our classroom, letter tiles, magnets etc. and later move to more traditional word work activities like word families, sentence building, word building etc. Finally, my writing table doubles as my sight word station. Here they work on the sight words we are introducing and, as the become better writers, independent writing and word wall work. This center takes a bit to get going so I have a ton of fine motor practice stuff here... lacing, hole punching ,tracing activities to help them gain needed skills earlier in the year. The payoff comes later when this center produces great writing :0)!!!!

They do one "must do" center each day and move to the choice center assigned to that group when they complete the assigned task in the must-do center. Choice centers should be based on whatever you have available for use in your room that will encourage good, hard work at the first center. I am very careful to watch for those that rush to move on AND I have only centers that support my litearacy standards... no total play centers- that is for another time of the day in my class.

My centers are very hands on and include many ideas from Debbie Diller's book, Litearacy Workstations, (I think that is the title!). I do understand the concept behind 2 or so children in a group, and I have tried it, but it honestly does not work for me or my aide. I also love The Daily 5, but again, I think it is just a little out of reach for my kdg. babies to accomplish the stamina in their independent times which I need to run the remainder of my guided reading groups until much later in the year. I think I have worked both theories in to my center times but made it more of my own hybrid. :0) Reading those books at some point will probably help you plan effective centers for this age group. (Diller's book would be my first read if I were you.)

I know this is the "old fashioned " center schedule and many have gone away from this but my theory is.... everything in education comes back again... I am just ahead of the next big trend! HA!! HA!! Seriously, I think it is the quality of the activities in each center, and not the way you rotate or manage them that makes for a great learning time for your students.....