Ah, literacy, my personal favorite to teach. We do literacy in the afternoons and it makes for such an easy and relaxing end to the day. While all subject areas are important to teach, I find that literacy is where everything really ties together. The phonics they’ve been working on, the spelling patterns, the writing components, all get tied together in our 60-75 minute literacy block.
But putting those literacy centers together can take hours and hours of prep work. And with everything else on our plates right now, there just isn’t enough time in the week to put together engaging, differentiated center activities. Or is there…? I have a list of 15 resources that are PERFECT for structured literacy centers. And the best part is that they can be prepped in 10 minutes or less!
There are so many skills that need to be covered during structured literacy centers. How do you organize all of them? And what activities should you make sure to include so that academic standards are met?
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To get started, you need to create a routine for your students that allows them to transition among their centers quickly and easily without interrupting your small groups. I find that using rotation slides is a very simple and visual way of showing your students exactly where they need to be and what skill they are working on.
1. Phonemic Awareness Centers
Phonemic awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate the smallest unit of language, phonemes, within words. Basically, it is working with and manipulating sounds within words.
Blending onsets and rimes, or adding a sound to a given word provides your students with opportunities to manipulate sounds. And on the other side, they can delete sounds from words to orally share what is left after removing the beginning, middle, or ending sound from a word.
You can also have your students listen for and identify rhyming pairs, or work with syllable segmentation or blending in your phonemic awareness centers.
You can take sound manipulation a step further and add a phonics component to it. Word ladders are a great way to combine phonemic awareness and phonics.
2. Phonics Centers
Phonics and phonemic awareness go hand in hand, when we add visual representation (letters) to the activities. The word ladders I mentioned above can be used in your phonics center. Increase the rigor a bit and give them a challenge to get from one word to another.
With the emphasis on the Science of Reading in classrooms recently, a lot of teachers are using Word Mapping in their phonics centers. This helps students to work with the words in their decodable readers and practice specific phonics skills.
Another phonics option for your literacy centers is word work mats! No laminating, no cutting, just print and go!
A student favorite for phonics practice is to play a game of I Spy with phonics words. Put magnifying glasses in there with markers and page protectors and it will be the quietest center in your classroom!
3. Fluency Center Activities
Fluency is one of the big five and something we want all of our little learners to have success with. It can be a tricky skill for students to complete independently. Make fluency much easier for your students by having them practice their decodable reader from small group in their fluency center.
Think about spicing up your fluency center beyond just reading the book. Students can use microphones or whisper phones to make this type of station more fun. If partner reading isn’t an option, have students record themselves on an iPad so they can listen to their own reading. Plus, you can listen as well and use it as progress monitoring!
Decodable readers are all the rage these days, especially with the implementation of the Science of Reading. But some of you may be able to use other fluency activities in your small groups. For additional practice, try using fluency passages or leveled reading passages.
4. Comprehension Centers
Most teachers usually pair their comprehension activity with their fluency activity. It may happen in the same center station, or in two separate ones. Mix things up in your comprehension center by sometimes having your students answer questions from their decodable reader, or a simple decodable passage.
Take comprehension skills a step further and have your students work with nonfiction text. They can practice understanding different nonfiction text features, like reading diagrams and charts or working with a glossary. On the other side, your comprehension center can bring out the personalities of your students through paired partner plays, or a phonics poem.
5. Writing Center Station Activities
Whether you use the Daily 5 model, the Big Five +2, or any other type of structure for your small groups block, writing will always be a key component. Writing is where they take everything they’ve learned and apply it independently! Transformation stations are a great way to get students excited about writing, while also promoting creativity!
If your students need a little more guidance and support with what they are writing, prompts may be a better choice. They can use the editing checks to help make sure all components of their writing are present. It’s a great way for students to practice the conventions of sentence writing.
Once they have the conventions all set, your students can work on expanding their sentences in fun, thematic ways. And for our emerging writers who are working on creating simple sentences, try building a sentence by cutting the words out and glueing them in the correct order.
If you’ve never used directed drawings as a literacy center, I highly recommend it! You might be wondering, how could a directed drawing be used as a literacy station? What you are envisioning probably isn’t what I’m talking about. Yes, there is a quick 6-step drawing and your students can then write a few sentences. But the ELA skills don’t end there. Flip the paper over to practice phonics, grammar, vocabulary, and other literacy skills.
6. Word Work Centers
Whether your students are working on a specific list of spelling words, trick words, sight words, editable spelling is a great option for teachers to utilize. Again, we’re talking 5-10 minutes of prep here…tops!
Grab the list of words from your current unit, type them in on the first page, and watch all of your spelling words magically appear in dozens of student-friendly activities. The objective will stay the same, but students will LOVE trying all the different activities!
Use phonics skills to give your students another print and go option for word work practice. You can include rainbow writing, spin and write, block writing, and a few other activities to keep your students engaged while working in this center station.
7. Fine Motor Centers
For our early learners, building those muscles in our hands and fingers are a must. You can start simple with lacing cards or using play dough, then add in content skills to this center. Color by Codes for literacy skills are the perfect way to build those fine motor muscles while also allowing students to practice phonemic awareness and phonics. They are also guaranteed to be a “quiet” center in your classroom.
Add in manipulatives to your centers, such as dice or pop-its. I recommend the foam dice, so that you don’t have to listen to them being dropped on the table over and over again.
@educationtothecore How cute are these!?😍 #educationtothecore #teachersoftiktok #teachersontiktok #tiktokteacher
♬ GOOD VIBES - Ellen Once Again
So, where’s your head at? Thinking of re-working your literacy block? Tired of the activities you’ve been using for the last ten years? New to teaching literacy and don’t know where to start? Hopefully, you can leave today with a better sense of just how simple and stress-free setting up your literacy centers can be!
WRITTEN BY: SARAH POQUETTE
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