We made these adorable walruses from my Arctic Animals unit today. I love how they all turned out so unique. Our penguins are still fishing on our bulletin board so the herd of walruses won’t be hung up until next week when we use them to decorate our polar bears and walruses venn diagram. I will post a pic next week when they are all hanging.
So, I’ve had some questions about how I do Literacy Centers.
This is a picture of my Literacy Center board.
The pirates on top match the groups. For example, I have 5 kids in the pirate group, 5 kids in the anchor group etc;
Each group goes to the centers below their icon each day. The first row shows their “have to” and the second row shows their fun center that they can go to when they finish.
My classroom is Teeny-Tiny so there is no room to keep centers set up. My centers are stored in the system shown below. The group captain goes and gets the center drawer and takes it to the table where the group will work. The ABC center always has activities that relate to phonics. For example, this week we are doing an ot, op, og picture sort. The kids sort the pictures into the appropriate group, glue them down and then stretch the words to write the sounds. You can download a sample of them here. {The clipart for these is from djinkers and carson dellosa}.
Word Work usually always involves an activity from my Popcorn words units.
and the other ones are usually “themed” centers (see lesson plans).
Writer’s Workshop and Reader’s Workshop are completely separate and aren’t done during this time.
My district requires them to have their own block of time.
I am working on a mini literacy center management resource that will be a FREEBIE. It will include management ideas and icons, etc; It should be available in the next few weeks.
During this time I am pulling Guided Reading groups. I just pull them from their center to come to me and then when I am finished with them they go back to their center activity. I have a Guided Reading unit on TPT if you want to check it out. It includes my word work activities, comprehension activities, and all of my planning sheets.
These are some of my planning templates. The names have been changed to protect the innocent! LOL
This running record form is printed two to a page and it allows me to do a quick running record on a child and then circle the strategies he or she is using well. I think jot a quick note about what we still need to work on. This is also in my GR unit.
Google docs is giving me fits with uploading right now! Grrr! I will have to post my lesson plans and the writing conferring sheet I promised tomorrow.
Happy Thursday friends!
