Literacy Work Centers vs' Traditional Learning Centers

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Literacy Work Centers vs. Traditional Learning
Centers
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Literacy Work Centers vs. Learning Centers

• Now
• Materials are taught modeled first.
• Then they are placed in work station for
  independent use.

• Then
• New materials were placed in the center without
  first being use in teaching.
• Often introduced all the new materials at one
  time.

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Literacy Centers vs. Learning Centers

• Now
• Stations remain set up all year long.
• Materials are changed to reflect childrens
  reading levels, strategies taught, standards
  taught.

• Then
• Centers were often changed weekly with units of
  study.
• Children did the same work.

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Literacy Centers vs. Learning Centers

• Now.
• Materials are differentiated. Students have
  controlled choices.
• All students go to work stations daily.
• Work is meaningful integral part of childs
  instruction.

• Then
• All students did the same activities at centers.
• Centers often used only when finished their
  work.
• Used for fun motivation.

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Literacy Centers vs. Learning Centers

• Now
• Teacher does less work making stuff.
• No longer bored students or popping up students
  asking questions about worksheets/direction at a
  center.

• Then..
• Teacher spent hours cutting making stuff.
• Students may not have understood what to do at
  centers.

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Literacy Centers vs. Learning Centers

• Now
• Theres accountability to centers through
  share time
• Share Basket- teacher controlled sharing.
• Observing assessing everyday

• Then
• Cleaned up began something else.
• Teacher assessed activity-how long, how
  difficult, etc. not the child

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What children are doing at a literacy station

• internalizing what is taught through direct
  practice
• connecting old learning to new
• working on their level
• becoming independent learners
• making choices
• practicing reading writing

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Gradual Release of Responsibility (Diller, p.7)
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Non-negotiables of Debbie Diller

• Focus on practice and purposes, not the stuff
  of stations. p. 9 (Diller)
• begin with what youre teaching-(standards) -not
  with activity

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Non-negotiables

• Link to your teaching
• When practice is linked to instruction, you get
  more bang for your teaching. (p.9)
• Slow down to speed up
• Dont put out too much materials at once.
• Make sure all materials have been taught.
• Establish routines before pulling small groups.

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Non-negotiables

• Balance process and product
• celebrate the process of learning to read
  write by letting students engage in reading
  writing without a product at every station.
• assess students progress in many ways

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Non-negotiables

• Less is more
• dont put out entire book collection of 200 books
  at the start of the year expect kids to keep in
  order
• start small add over time

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Non-negotiables

• Use novelty Simplify
• introduce 1 new task or material at a time the
  novelty with last longer
• if it takes longer to make something than it
  does for children to use it instructionally, then
  dont bother making it. (p.10)

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Off task students

• child sits near the small group table
• child can still hear learn but not a
  participant- invisible to group teacher
• if child is sent back to desk, no learning
  continues- child doesnt have to work
• ADHD child- work in a hula hoop with supplies to
  give boundaries

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Overview

• Mini lesson is taught
• Release to centers begin 1st small group for
  reading
• Circle around room between small
  groups-accountability observe for sharing
• Signal for clean up
• Share work from centers

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Walk- through for observers

• Literacy Centers
• students are engaged /on task
• students fix problems without the teacher
• class noise is minimal
• students know the why to what theyre doing

• Guided Reading
• teacher frontloadsvocab, concepts, text
  structure
• students whisper read (no round robin)
• teacher listens in on the reading or does a
  running record on a student
• comprehension is checked along the way

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Mrs. Polymers Literacy Centers

• The following slides are from a website of Mrs.
  Polymer

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Work Board

•  My students work in Literacy Stations
  independently for forty-five minutes each day. 
  During this time, I pull students for small group
  reading instruction.    For the first four weeks
  of school, I introduce my stations and explain
  the station rotation. 
• After this, each group is given a choice of
  three stations to work in each day.
• They can stay in the first center as long as
  they like or leave as soon as they have finished
  their work.
• Mrs. Polymer

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Writing
Writing

• Write the Room-I have clipboards, chalkboards,
  and white boards for the children to write on. 
  They copy words that are displayed around the
  room on posters, charts, word wall, and on
  books.  A variety of writing materials (pencils,
  colored pencils, markers, gel pens, paper, note
  pads) are available for use in this station.

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Writing

• Letter Tiles-Your students can use vocabulary
  cards with pictures and words to make words. 
  They can match capital letters to lowercase
  letters and put the alphabet in order.

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Reading

• Alphabet Books-All of my alphabet books are put
  in a basket for reading.

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Reading

• Storytelling-I have a great storytelling board
  from Lakeshore.  The students love to retell
  stories using the characters and the storyboard. 
  I also have a flannel board with many pieces. 
  Masks and puppets are good for retelling

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Read the room
Read the Room-Many types of pointers are used to
read print in the room.  The students go around
the room reading words they know.  I also have
funny glasses, theme related masks, magnifying
glasses, toilet paper binoculars, and paper towel
telescopes that can be used while reading the
room.  Many of my pointers are made with dowel
sticks and craft foam.
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Big Books

• Big Books-I have a wide selection of big books
  that the students can read using pointers.  They
  can read with a partner or on their own.  Word
  wands are used to focus on sight words.

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Pocket chart

• Pocket Charts-I have many pocket charts in the
  classroom for the children to use.  We use poems,
  chants, language experience stories, and rhymes
  in pocket charts.  I write the rhyme on sentence
  strips, cut up the words, and put them in Ziploc
  bags by lines.  The students must put the rhymes
  back together by matching the words to the rhyme.

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Poetry

• Poem Center - Each week I select a poem and place
  it on large paper.  The students must write the
  poem in their journal and then draw a picture of
  what they see in their mind when they read the
  poem.  Sometimes I may ask them to circle rhyming
  words or words that begin with a certain sound.
• Adaption copy poem so kids dont take so long in
  copying poem 

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Poetry

• Poetry Put Together
• Primary Skill readingGlue a poem on the front
  of a manilla envelope. On the inside of the
  manilla envelope, place the words to the poem
  printed on small individual pieces of poster
  board. Students are to put the poem together,
  word-by-word. When finished the individual ask
  students to read the poem to a friend or the
  teacher, then place words back into the envelope.

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Poetry

• Song Poetry Cards-I have copies of poems in a
  basket to be read with pointers.  Props are
  sometimes added to dramatize the poem.  Paper,
  pencils, and crayons are used to illustrate the
  poems.  Some poems are cut in stanzas to be put
  back together in a pocket chart.

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Overhead Station
Overhead Projector-The students love the overhead
station.  Overhead letter tiles, overhead sight
words, overhead word  family tiles, letter
dot-to-dot transparencies, overhead pictures with
the correct spaces for the letter tiles, are
just some of the things that students can choose
from.
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Word Station
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Making Words

• Make five words
• 1.(Use two tiles to make a word)__________________
  ___________________________
• 2.(Use three tiles to make a word)________________
  ____________________________
• 3(Use three tiles to make a word)_________________
  ___________________________
• 4. (Use four tiles to make a word)________________
  ____________________________
• 5(Use three or more tiles to make a word I
  wonder if you can use all the tiles to make one
  word?)
• ____________________________________________
• Pick two of the words and use them in a sentence.
• 1.________________________________________________
  ______________________
• 2.________________________________________________
  ______________________

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Word Station
Lite Brite-Students practice fine motor skills
and proper letter formation using laminated
paper.   Etch Sketch, Light Brite, and letter
stencils are also used  for making letters and
words.
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Word Station
http//www.mrspohlmeyerskinderpage.com/stations.ht
m

• Build a Sentence-I have laminated words that make
  a simple sentence in Ziploc bags.  The students
  make the sentence and then record it on paper and
  then illustrate their sentence.

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Word Station

•  Sight Words -Sight word rings can be used as a
  word deck for calling out the sight words.  There
  are sightSight Words -Sight word rings can be
  used as a word deck for calling out the sight
  words.  There are sight word stamps to match with
  the cards.  Sight word bottles (discovery
  bottles) include color and number words.  The
  students must find a word in the bottle and
  highlight the word on a ditto sheet. word stamps
  to match with the cards.  Sight word bottles
  (discovery bottles) include color and number
  words.  The students must find a word in the
  bottle and highlight the word on a ditto

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Word

• Kids' Name Matching Game
• Primary Skill readingPlace a photo of each
  child in your class on its zip-loc baggie. Then
  inside the baggie include a strip with that
  child's name and the individual letters that make
  up that child's name. A student unzips the bag,
  takes out the name strip, puts it on the baggie
  above the child's picture, then "spells" the name
  with the individual letters below the picture.
  Encourage the kids to work in their own large
  area and do one name at a time so that the
  seperate letters stay in the right baggies.

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Word

• Alphabet Bottles  This is the letter "B"
  bottle.  The bottle has water in it.  In this
  bottle are lots of things that start with the
  letter "B"....buttons, a banana, a baby, a baby
  bottle, beads, blue (glitter), a bat, and a
  bird.   I made one for each letter of the
  alphabet.  I originally had them in pop/water
  bottles, but I found these bottles at Discount
  School Supply (www.discountschoolsupply.com) and
  liked the shape of these better.  I get LOTS of
  email from people asking about these bottles. 
  Last I knew, they were sold out of these bottles.
  (

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Classmate Name Book 

•  
•  
• Materials
• Scissors
• Markers
• Glue Stick
• Folder in Which to Keep Unfinished Work
• Classmate Names (outline font)
• Classmate Pictures
• Pre-made and Bound Booklet (8 1/2 by 5 1/2
  inches)

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Word
Word Study-The word station is filled with many
ways to make words.  Sight word rings are used to
make words.   A mini-clothesline can be used to
spell out word wall words, names, and sight
words.  A grab bag of letters is used to pull out
a letter and write a word that begins with that
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Browsing boxes

• Book Boxes-Each student has their own book box
  (cereal box covered with contact paper) that
  holds their books that we make at school.  Book
  boxes also hold a copy of the shared reading book
  for the week
• Ice bins
• Baggies

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Other Stations

• http//www.ourschoolfamily.com/Literacy20Centers.
  htm

http//www.mrsbonthuisclass.com/Literacycenters2.h
tm
http//www.literacycenter.net/
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interactive websites for centers

• http//www.bbc.co.uk/schools/

• http//www.bbc.co.uk/schools/

http//www.literacycenter.net/
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What a child can do in cooperation today, he can
do alone tomorrow. Lev Vygotsky