Centers and Independent Work – Part Seven

Reading Centers – Part One

          We want to help reinforce their reading skills and foster a love of reading through independent reading. I will use the term “independent reading” to mean reading done independently of the teacher. Students may be buddy reading, depending on the purpose and the text. All independent reading should be tied to a purpose and the students should know their purpose for reading. The purpose could be to make connections, to identify narrative elements, to use text features, or to use context clues to define unknown words.

There are several ways the reading center can be set up.  One way is that the teacher can collect several activities with a binder ring. There can be an independent reading rubric, an annotation rubric, and question stems.  Depending on the purpose for reading each day, the teacher can direct which activities the students need to do. Remember, students would need to be familiar with these activities and how to do them.  Some materials you may want to include in the reading center might include: books from all genres, bookmarks, student made books, pillows, bean bags, chairs, pointers, special “reading glasses”, pocket charts, sentence strips, theme related books, magazines, newspapers, whisper phones, highlighter tape and wikki stixs.

Fantastic Facts

          One center idea for reading is called Fantastic Facts. In this center, students read a non-fiction book.  Then they create a fact poster listing four facts that they learned from the text.

To make the foldable together:

·        First, fold the paper in half (hamburger style).

·        Then fold it in half again (hamburger style).

·        Take the middle corner, and fold a triangle.

·        When you open your paper, you have a space in the middle and four boxes to write in.

The possible steps students could do at this center are:

1.     Choose a non-fiction book to read.

2.     When you are done reading, fold your paper.

3.     Write the title and author in the center.

4.     Label each box: Fact 1, Fact 2, Fact 3, Fact 4.

5.     Record a fact from the text in each box.

6.     Share your poster with a partner.

This is just one way Fantastic Facts could look like. It’s just one idea. If you want to use Dig into the Dictionary in your classroom, you’ll need to tailor it to fit your students’ needs.  Some other considerations might be:

• ·        Are students doing this activity in pairs or independently?  Depending on the students and the text, you may want students to work on this center as a group. Each student could contribute a fact.
• ·        What might this center look like?  You might have a tub of non-fiction books, a stack of blank paper, and an example sitting on a bookshelf. Students could take the materials and sit on the carpet to read and work. Or students could be taking this book from small group to independent work with this book to continue working.
• ·        What skills would my students need to have in order to do this center? Depending on the text, students may need to know the difference between a fact and an opinion. Students would also need to know how to create the foldable.