free choice or rotation

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Home : 2003 : June : 22

free choice or rotation
By Julianne

I've used both a free choice type of centers grouping and a rotation. It wasn't that I liked either system better, it was because one group of students just wasn't mature enough to handle free choice. When I did free choice
it looked like this: Each center had a maximum number of students listed. Usually it was the number of chairs set aside for that center. If a center was full, it was full. No one could go there until someone else left. I would excuse students to centers a couple at a time so there wasn't a mad dash for the most popular centers. Occasionally I had to ask students to make a switch

if I saw that they were spending way too much time at a particular center. Toward the middle of the year I introduced a centers notebook where they had to check off the centers they had done. It takes practice for a group to learn how to do this, but it made them much more accountable for their learning. There were some centers they had to visit every week, others that were choices. I didn't correct much of the work they handed in, just marked it off and did a spot check once in a while. I felt like they really got a lot out of being able to group and regroup with different students all the time. Unfortunately, this year's group just couldn't get the hang of it and we ended up going to a centers rotation just to save my nerves!