Literacy Centers

Independent Work Management..."centers" or "jobs" in the K-2 classrooms seem to be quite overwhelming for teachers. I have learned that it is very important to take your time introducing centers to your class BEFORE you begin your work with Guided Reading. This will pay off later as far as behavior management and working independently is concerned. Use a Work Board and teach your students the rules and expectations from the beginning. 

Teach one center at a time while being explicit with your teaching. Revisit this center for a few days. Once you are certain your students can control the center independently, add on a new center. Repeat.

It is important that your centers are meaningful and authentic. It's not just busy work. It is meaningful work that supports their learning about literacy. NO WORKSHEETS! They fail you time and time again. Learning skills in isolation does not teach a reader how to read. There are SO many great center ideas in the Fountas and Pinnell Phonics books! Use them to back up the skills that you've already taught. Don't overthink your centers. You can keep many of the same centers just change out the principle for the week. I'm looking forward to incorporating poetry and technology in my centers this year...more to come on that! 

 

What are your favorite centers to use with your students? Some that I think I will start with this year are:

*Independent Reading

*Browsing Boxes

*Read Around the Room

*Listening Center

*Poetey Center

*Magnetic Letters

*Various Phonics Centers

(Start simple...)

Things to Remember:

1.Take your time (go slow to go fast...)

2. Be explicit with your teaching

3. Retech

4. There is nothing too small to teach and revisit

5. Don't teach a new center until you are certain your students can control the previous one(s).

6. Keep them meaningful and authentic. No WORKSHEETS

7. Don't overthink them

Starting again...

This past week, I started my new endeavor to become Dual Certified as a PreK- 6 Literacy Collaborative Coordinator. I already hold my Intermediate Cert focusing in grades 3-6. The intermediate kids are where I've spent the majority of my career through AIS services and LC. I'm quite intimidated by the little ones, but they sure are cute. 

I never thought about working with the little kiddos until this past school year when my district decided that they were going to hire back 2 more coaches, but we would stay in one building (last year I was in all four buildings concentrating in Intermediate). This would mean that each coach would have to go back to Lesley University in Cambride, MA to learn the other half of their specialty. 

Training started this week with 4 jam packed days of intense instruction about literacy in the primary classrooms. I found myself a few times saying not only in my head, but also aloud, "What did I get myself into?!" 

A lot of the time was spent discussing the theory behind LC in primary concentrating on the work of Marie Clay, as well as many others. While the theory is grounded and very similar in both the primary and intermediate settings, there were some big ideas that we needed to dive into to understand the preK-2 world.

We discussed Writing Workshop and spending a lot of time practicing storytelling and making books. This is very new to me, but I'm looking forward to trying it out this year (I will share our work here this year). 

Interactive Writing was a huge undertaking. I've done Shared Writing with my students in the Intermediate setting, but Interactive is a whole new game. While it is powerful for students, teachers must be careful observers and know their students. It is all about the Zone of Proximal Development and nudging students to learn an aspect of writing that as individuals they need to focus on and incorporate in their independent writing. I will post a video on this once I try it out this year.

More about this last week to come....

Any thoughts on Interactive Writing or Writers' Workshop?