Centers- What are they and how do they benefit your child?

Centers are one small part of our literacy and math instruction.  A typical reading and math lesson has many parts. First, there is the whole group lesson; this is when I teach a new skill. In the whole group lesson, the learner is given time to explore and get explanation for a new skill. There is normally some type of work to check the learners understanding. When students are finished with their work from the whole group lesson the learner works in centers. You may be wondering what is Mrs. Young doing during this time, I am pulling small groups of students for re-teaching lessons, extension of learning lessons and guided reading group. This is why centers are so important!!! The quality small group instruction that can be given while everyone is still actively engaged makes for an unbeatable approach to meeting everyone’s needs.

There are other great things about centers:

·         The learner is independently working on an activity to make them a better reader or mathematician. They are using a map to manage completing the required activities while building great time management skills. They must complete a number of centers (11 centers must be complete most of the time) before Fun Friday!

·         Once the learner completes an activity they must put it in their Center Folder until Friday to be checked for Fun Friday. This builds great accountability for your own learning as well as your belongings.

·         Students must also learn to use their resource around the room. This is one of the main reasons I love centers. As learners of a technology driven world, our students do not have to be experts at any one topic any more…they just have to experts at finding the answer to any question.  During centers the learner must navigate around the room gathering supplies to complete centers. They can also use any resource in the room to complete their centers. For example, during our “Read the Room” centers the learner can use words found on the wall or in books from our classroom library. These students practice the important emergent reader skill of beginning sounds while learning that a book can give you the answers.

• Another wonderful aspect of centers is…everyone is having fun while practicing a needed skill. There are lots of games, hands-on activities and social interactions.

	What are the students doing?	What is Mrs. Young doing?	Example from this week:
Whole Group Lesson	Actively listening Learning new skill Exploring new skill	Teaching a new skill Monitoring students learning	I taught a lesson about fact families (2+3=5, 3+2=5, 5-2=3, 5-3=2)
Work to check students understand of new skill	Practicing a new skill	Monitoring and correcting any misconceptions about the skill learned today	The students played Go Fish with fact families. They have to find all 4 number sentence that belong in the same family. The student had to ask for any fact that belonged in the 4,5,9 family.
Centers/Small Group Time	Independently practicing on a skill already learned	Meeting with small group for Guided Reading, Extension Lessons or re-teaching lessons	A couple of examples of centers: Double fact game (4+4=8, 6+6=12) Making a graph and reading it Things Mrs. Young might be doing: Extension lesson- a few students understood fact families well enough we were able to play Go Fish by asking for a specific fact that belong in the family. For example they would have 4+5+9, 5+4+9, and 9-5=4, they would have to ask for 9-4=5.

So you have seen all those papers stapled together in your child’s folder on Friday and I am sure you have heard about Fun Friday. So here are a few helpful hints about all those papers. At the end of the week, I check everyone center work to make sure it is completed and always put a smile face on them when completed. If you look at how maybe different colors of markers are used on the center map you can see how good of a self manager your child is. Every time I have to send them to rework on an activity I use a different color marker.

In the picture below, the student complete all the centers because everything is colored in. When I checked everything the 1^st time they need to work on completed all but one center correct. They went back to work on it and I check it in red this time. Then they received a smile face for finishing everything.