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Examples of
Literacy
Centers and
Activities |
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Reading/Book Center/Library
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Begin with a
small number of books to choose from in a classroom library and
work on book behavior. Students may choose a book from book boxes
(leveled books or theme books).
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Students may
choose books to read on their own, with a partner (buddy reading)
or with a book buddy (stuffed animal). The teacher may want to
stay at this center and read to individuals or let them read to
her. Later in the year guided reading groups may be part of this
center.
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Make a rule
that children must put the book back on the shelf after they have
"read it". Let them know if quiet talking
with a friend
is permissible
if they are reading the same book.
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A product of
this center might be to draw a picture about a book. (A great “I
Like” component)
Examples of this center might be:
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Tape-a-Story: Students can tape themselves reading. Add to the
listening center or use for recordkeeping.
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Sign
Language
Center: Students use posters, flashcards, and
books to spell letters or sign ideas.
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Magazines: Students may choose Your Big Backyard, Ranger Rick, and
other magazines to look through and read.
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Theme Library:
As each new theme or new season comes, have a bookshelf in the
room that is full of related books. Students are able to choose
some of their favorite stories to read at this center.
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Reading the Room:
Students may choose a pointer, glasses, flyswatters and read the
walls of the classroom. They may read the calendar, poems, labels,
word wall, alphabet, pocket
charts and any other print that may be in the classroom.
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Writing Center
Students can choose from a variety of writing materials to practice
writing letters, names or words. They may also work on writing
workshop stories, theme related stories, and other writing
activities (lists, puppet show/plays, greeting cards, letters, theme
books).
Tips for the
writing center include:
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Snip off
corner of pages
they have already used and it will be easy for them to find the
page they are supposed to write on next.
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Use
a date stamp
on each journal page.
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Provide a variety of
writing utensils (colored
pencils, markers) and writing materials.
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Write on dry erase boards, chalkboards, magnadoodles.
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Provide stencils and
stamps.
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Stock
dictionaries in the writing center, such as theme dictionaries
like families, fall words, Thanksgiving words, etc.
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Use these
materials to form letters or words:
a. playdough
b. shaving cream
c. cornmeal
d. hair-gel or fingerpaint in sealed baggies
e. wikki-sticks
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This center should have a
product.
Examples of this center might be:
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Make a picture
dictionary to go along with a theme. For example, if we are
talking about pond animals, they draw a pond animal on each page
of their book and write the word, using the words displayed at the
writing center. There may be a sentence frame on each page, such
as: ______ is my friend.
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Copy and
illustrate words (for example 'My Vegetable Book' 4 pages stapled
together in which the Kinders copy the names from vegetable seed
packets.)
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Stamping:
Students can stamp out words or sentences using rubber stamp
alphabet letters or words.
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Tablecloth
writing (a big piece of butcher paper on which they write
"Something I learned about plants" etc.)
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Write-and-Lift: Use the little pads that you write on and lift up
the plastic and the word disappears.
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Build-a-Sentence: Students choose sentence parts out of a bag.
They put them together to make a silly sentence which is copied on
to a sentence strip and illustrated. Words are color coded:
Articles-yellow, nouns-green, verbs-red, adjectives-pink.
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Rainbow Writing: Students write words/letters in words in
different colors.
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Journal writing: Students may write on a specific topic given or
own choice.
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Mailbox/Post office: Students can write letters to their friends
and family and put in a mailbox.
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Science Observation Journal: Students examined displays and then
draw and record what they see.
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Stamp-a-story: Students use stamps/stickers to write rebus
sentences or sticker story stories.
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Shopping: Laminated on sentence strips and bound into
books—labeled pictures of food, toys, clothing, etc. You will also
need writing utensils and "list paper," small memo books, long
strips of lined paper.
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Patterned sentence and
stamps: Teacher writes a SIMPLE sentence using words from the word
wall. It may be, "I see a _____." The students write this down.
Then they use stamps (letters, numbers, and pictures) and an ink
pad to complete the sentence. They reread the sentence and move on
to the next sentence.
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Book Making: Students may create their own books using pre-made
books or books that they make themselves.
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Listening Center
Students listen
to a book and tape. They may be asked to respond by drawing the
setting, characters or their favorite part. They might just tell
each other which part of the book they liked best.
Sometimes students listen to directions given on a tape to complete
a worksheet after listening to a story. (Lakeshore
has one with about 8 identical cards for each letter. There is a
tape for each letter. The students use dry erase markers and follow
the directions on the tape. It tells them what to do and it praises
them and corrects it for them. All they need are the dry erase
markers and the tissue to erase if they made a mistake.)
Songs: Students listen and sing to songs on tape players or read on
cards.
Dr. Jean
has a sign language alphabet song and they can follow along on a
sign language chart.
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Phonics Center
Students do
games, file folders activities, read the room, or use the overhead
at this center. The possibilities at this center are endless. Some
Examples are:
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Write the Word Cards: Students use letter/phonic knowledge to
write the word on a laminated picture card. There are blanks for
each letter in the word below the picture for clues.
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Word Family
Strips: Students use rime fold-overs to create new words in the
same "family." Then they record all the words they made.
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Letter/Sound Match: Students match up objects and letters.
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Picture labels: Have students use a washable pen to label magazine
pictures on laminated file folders. These can be photocopied for
assessment.
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Word clothesline: Students attach individual letter cards with
clothespins on small clothesline using clothespins.
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Sand Table/Playdough: Use Jell-O jiggler molds or cookie cutters
to make words.
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Magnetic letters/words and magnetic boards: Students manipulate
letters to spell names, words, or sentences.
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Letter/Sound Match: Students match up objects and letters.
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Rhyming Word Match: match
picture to word.
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Word families: Partner Puzzle, Shape
book, word building mat, word slide, recording sheet, stationery
and worksheets. Scroll down toward the bottom of this page:
http://carlscorner.us/word_way.htm
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Sight Word Center
Word wall words are
reinforced through some of these activities:
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Sight Word Race:
Make a graph with 6 columns and 8 rows. At the bottom of each
column, put one of the sight words. Use a wooden cube (from a
craft store) and make a die, writing the six words on it, one word
on each side of the die. The child rolls the die and puts an X in
the column above the word that they roll. It is like a "race" to
see which word wins, only not competitive against anyone. Each
child at the center has their own paper and die.
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Highlighter
Activity:
Copy pages
from an easy chapter book, such as Junie B. Jones, and the
children use highlighters to highlight all of our sight words.
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Pocket
Chart/Magnet Center:
Students manipulate sentence strips, words and letters at this
center. This
should coordinate with a theme or skills being targeted.
Students match words/sentences or "fill
in" with word cards on charts of poems and nursery rhymes.
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Word
stamps, letter tiles and words, word family activities, rhyming
cards etc.
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Alphabet/ABC Center
This center uses hands-on
materials to help students recognize alphabet letters, write them,
match them, sequence them and begin using the letters to spell
words. Here are some examples of materials and activities for this
center:
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Alphabet puzzles
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Magnetic letters, sandpaper
letters, alphabet letter stamps
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Alphabet Bingo
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ABC
memory games
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Letter matching
game with an alphabet chart for reference
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ABC
Beads to spell out words by stringing alphabet beans in order.
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Letter arcs: Students match plastic letters to their "shadows" in
alphabetical
order. The other side of the mat only shows the letters: A, M, N,
and Z. The
students must put the letters in order based on their knowledge. A
Letter Arc can be found at the underlined link. Page down to Book
One, then Phonics, then Letter Recognition. It's on page 004.
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Alphabet Flash Cards: Have students read these, put them in
alphabetical order, sort into vowels/consonants, play "Go Fish".
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Magic letters: Students pull sandpaper letters out of a bag. They
place the letter under a piece of paper, rub crayons over it, and
the letter "magically" appears. Then they can illustrate words that
begin (or end, for those who are ready) with that sound.
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Computer laptops: Glue a copy of the computer keyboard into a file
folder and add a handle. Students can practice "typing" names and
words.
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Alpha-dice: Using a multisided alphabet die (Scattergories),
students can play (roll the dice, cross the letter off on a
page/copy the letter/print the lower case letter it coincides with,
etc.)
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Magazine/Newspaper Search: Have students search for particular
letters or words in magazines or newspapers. Highlight these, or cut
and glue the letters/words on another piece of paper.
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ABC Discovery Bottles: Fill water bottles with confetti, alphabet
beads, and
objects. Write the letter on the lid and hot glue the lid on.
Students can move the bottles around and watch the objects, name the
objects, draw the objects on
recording sheets shaped like bottles, and try to write the names of
the items.
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Use
letter stamps or a blunt pencil to create letters/words in clay or
playdough.
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Going Fishing:
a. Students can fish for words or letters on paper fishes with paper
clips using a dowel with a magnet for a fishing pole.
b. Place plastic or foam letters in a plastic fish bowl. Students
use a fish net to scoop out some
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letters and print them on a programmed sheet that has four boxes
labeled with the numbers 1-4.
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Students write the letters caught on first scoop in
box 1, etc.
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Use blocks to make letters, then draw a picture of something that
begins with that letter.
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Chicka-Chicka-Boom-Boom: Draw or paint a coconut tree on a cookie
sheet, using clear varnish to seal. Add magnetic letters and the
book. Use the letters to retell the story.
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Alphabuilders: Straight, curved, and half circle parts are used to
make
letters or words.
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Shower Curtain Keyboard Games: Cut
a shower curtain in half and draw out the keyboard from the
computer, just the numbers and letters. Have the students (spell)
tap out (with the fly swatter) their names at the beginning of the
year and word wall words later in the year. This is an easy
center also because it can be folded up and put away so easily.
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Use the other half of the shower curtain and divide it into 24
rectangles. Write a star word in each rectangle. They tap on the
words they know or throw beanbags and read the words.
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Secret Code: Use clipart to
make a secret code alphabet. The beginning sound of the picture
represents the letter, such as an apple for a, a banana for b, etc.
Then use the clipart to create secret code words for the children to
decode. The students have to write the beginning sound below each
picture to spell a sight word. This could also be done with the
children’s names.
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Fishing: Write the sight
words on Ellison cut fish shapes. Put a paperclip on the tip and use
a magnet tied to yarn for a fishing pole. The kids go fishing. When
a child has fished out all the words, they must call me over to read
the words to me. Then we throw the fish back.
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Use flannel or sandpaper
letters on a flannel board
and
manipulate letters to make names, words, or letter sorts.
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Story/Retelling Center
Students can
tell original stories or retell familiar stories. Many
story props
can be found here to print out to use at some of these centers. Some
examples are:
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Use flannel board pieces to retell stories, sequence stories, or
make up stories.
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Puppets: Students use puppets to tell and retell stories.
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Have a Drama
Center using props or costumes.
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Deal-a-Story: Using purchased cards, students choose one card of
each color to write a story about.
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Chicka-Chicka-Boom-Boom: Draw or paint a coconut tree on a cookie
sheet, using clear varnish to seal. Add magnetic letters and the
book. Use the letters to retell the story.
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Use a pocket chart to sequence or retell stories.
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Photocopy pages from a book to use for retelling.
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Overhead
Center
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Students use clear lettered tiles, water-based pens, and other
materials to practice stories, letters, names and words on the
overhead projector.
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They can find names/words---just type and print classmates' names or
sight words on a transparency and give them a fly swatter to find
words that are called out.
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Print out a dinosaur (or
other shape) on a transparency and project it onto a large piece of
newsprint. Have them work together to trace it, then
paint/mosaic/decorate it. This could also be done with story
characters (such as Mrs. Wishy Washy.)
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Make up shadow stories or
retell stories by cutting silhouettes of characters and story props.
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During Read the Room, a
song or poem printed on a transparency can be read off the wall.
Pages of a story could also be traced in permanent marker and the
children can be the "teacher" and read the story with a pointer.
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Big
Book
Center
Students choose big book stories to reread. They could point out
familiar words, practice tracking print, or build the story using
sentence strips or words.
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Poetry
Center
Students choose poetry charts, cards, cubes, or notebooks to reread.
Poetry cubes: Insert two half-gallon milk cartons and cover with
contact paper. Add Nursery rhymes, songs, or poems to sides.
Students roll cube and read/sing poem on top.
This site has these poems
printed out: Jack Be Nimble; One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, Five Little
Bees, Teddy Bear. They may be cut apart and reassembled. Look under
Poetry at this site:
http://geocities.com/maggieskindercorner/MaggiesKinderCorner/organizeapoem.pdf
These sites are good sources for poetry:
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/6459/archive.html
http://www.earlyliterature.ecsd.net/resources1.htm
http://www.expage.com/twelfthwebsite
http://mrsalphabet.com/poemoftheweek.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20011029192014/http://members.home.net/henriksent/
http://www.canteach.ca/elementary/songspoems.html
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/1133/2teach.html
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Write the Room
Students will use paper and clipboards to copy environmental print
around the room.
Here
are some insights about the Write the Room Center from Ardis in MI:
Sometimes the words students choose to copy gives the teacher a
great deal of information about their confidence and ability and how
they 'see' words. The more able kids get a kick out of finding and
copying
l-o-n-g words (like "Antarctica") off the globe. The less able kids
copy "the", "red", "two", etc. How they place the words on a blank
sheet of paper is telling, too. Are they jumbled? Are they written
in a neat, organized fashion? Was the paper turned in all different
directions between words? Are the letters quasi-uniform in size? If
the words were placed horizontally, were there spaces between the
words?
It doesn't matter if they can 'read' the words or not. I'm not
assessing them on that. I want to know if they "see" words or not.
Do they recognize that a group of letters is a 'word’---even though
I
don't know what it says...I know it's a word. And that's the
beginning of reading and literacy.
These activities can make Write the Room more structured:
---Find and copy 5 words that have only 3 letters in them. 4? 5?
---Find and copy words that start with a particular letter.
---Find and copy words that end with a particular letter.
---Find and copy words that
begin with the letter of your name.
---Find and copy 1 month word, 1 color word, 1 day of the week word,
1 number word, etc.
---Find and copy words that
begin with the letters of a particular "theme word". Example: Find
one word that begins with each letter in "W I N T E R" or "R U D O L
P H".
---Find and copy X number of classmates’ names.
---Find and copy X number
of words that have MORE than 3 letters.
---Find and copy X number of words that have LESS than 5 letters.
---Find and copy X number of words that are on toys, games or the
globe.
---Find and copy X number
of words from the newspaper.
---Do a "ladder" activity.
Find one word that has one letter, then one word that has 2 letters,
then one word that has 3 letters, etc
---Do the same thing
alphabetically. Find one word that begins with A, one word that
begins with B, one word that begins with C, etc.
---Find and write five
words written on classmate's shirts. (Tell the children the day
before to wear "word" shirts.)
---Find and copy X number of words that are out in the hall.
Sometimes you have to give them specific kinds of words to look for
and a specific number of them to find. But a "Free Write" is
valuable, too...and some of them love that opportunity!
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Sorting Center
Picture-Letter-Word sort: Students sort cards by picture, letter, or
words.
Letter sort: Sort alphabet tiles on T-graph
a.
"Letters in my name/not in my name"
b. curves/ straight
c. tails/ no tails
d. by particular letter--G/ no g
e. by font
f. short/tall
g. number of strokes
Name/Word sort:
a. boys names/ girls names
b. sort by number of syllables
c. sort by beginning letter
d. sort by number of letters
e. sort by number of vowels
f. sort by category, if using pictures and words
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Art Center
Most supplies fit in plastic baby wipe containers.
Add abc stamps
and number stamps to art and they can make books.
Use a variety of materials to make
products responding to literature read.
a. puppets
b. posters
c. dioramas
d. bookmarks
e. book covers
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Computer/Electronic Games
Computer: A variety of language art related software titles are
available for the students to use.
Electronic Games: Students work on skill with electronic games like
Leap Frog Phonics, Twist and Shout Phonics, and any other game
within the classroom.
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Developmental Centers
Some teachers include
developmental centers as part of literacy centers, while other
teachers have students go to a developmental center following a
literacy center activity. Many developmental centers can become
literacy centers simply by adding books, paper and writing utensils.
Fine Motor center: Activities to use to strengthen finger
muscles.
a. coloring books
b. dot to dots
c. write on chalkboard with wet paint brushes
d. nuts and bolts
e. use tweezers and tongs to move items
f. clip clothespins on side of can, box
g. use stencils or trace simple pictures
h. use Lite-Brite
i. perforate paper using push pins
j. lacing or stringing beads
Playdough: make letters, exploration and appropriate cleanup
House
Blocks
Legos
Sand
table
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