Sunday, May 18, 2014

Centers

Thought I would share how I run my centers today! It took me a few years to figure out my centers  (yes, I said YEARS!) but now I love the way they work! Some of my centers are based off of Daily 5. SO I have 4 groups of students and they do four 20 minute rotations. This way I can see every group every day. Every day students will visit four places:
1) Guided Reading -with ME!
2) Phonics Phun- with my awesome assistant( I create activities for her groups or I find them on TPT)
3) Read! students will read to self, read to a buddy, shop the library, use the smart board or use e-readers.
4) Word Work or Work on Writing  5different colored shelves with many activities (I will do another post about these!)

After much cutting, laminating, clip art hunting I found the easiest way to display my centers, In a shoe holder-crazy right?! Pretty sure it cost me  $2.99 at Walmart. I am still on the hunt for a colorful one.

I pair students up and they work with each other for READ! and Word Work and Work on Writing. The students rotate in order of their card for the day. For example the top left group would follow this schedule: 1) Guided Reading 2)Phonics Fun 3) Orange- Word Work Work on Writing 4) Library visit.
I get my cute, FREE clip art here!

Each morning I rotate the cards down, I have 5 total cards in each set. Every week each group will visit all centers.

The colored pencils on the cards represent the word work and work on writing center. I have a whole shelf of centers.
Students may do what ever bin they like as long as they stay in their color.
I hope you found this helpful! How do you run your centers?