My Literacy Centers this year

Every year I try to get my literacy centers to be a little more efficient so that the students can really become independent with them.  With the move to a new school and new classroom, I again tried to make the process of centers more efficient.  Now my classroom came with this lovely shelving unit...

With plenty of counter space (of course the picture below was from me setting up the classroom).

I also had this lovely cart from Michael's that had 6 drawers on one side that would be perfect to hold each groups center booklets (I will post better pictures once I get  back into the classroom mid August).  I labelled each drawer with the Group number and little pictures of the students so they knew it was their drawer.


So looking at the counter space I had and the drawers, I realized I could put the drawers out on top of the counter space so the students could easily get their center booklets and start work right away.  This worked out really well.  The kids knew what group they were in and went straight to their drawer.  I could also put any other duotangs in there so they knew that whatever was in the drawer was okay to work on.  The center booklets were the first things that needed to be completed before they did any other work in the drawer.  

I created these center booklets so I could see the students' progression with certain activities.  I had the students do the following:
- Printing practice activities
- Letter recognition activities
- Big book activity
- 2 making words activities
- Sight word activities

I had the supplies needed for the activities on top of and in this storage bin I bought at Michael's...



The students knew where to get all the supplies they needed and set up at any table they wanted or even on the floor.  

I was able to float around and help out at the centers or do some student assessments while the students were at their centers.  

I loved doing my literacy centers this way and will continue doing them this way again but I have created a few more activities for the students and have organized it a little better for myself.  

I have created a Literacy Center Package for TPT that includes the following:

- Big Book Words Found (5 words or 10 words)
- Colour a Letter Recognition (Upper and Lower Case letters)
- Center Cover pages (editable)
- Center Cover pages (pdf)
- Large Dot letters for tracing (Upper and Lower Case letters)
- Sight Words tracing sheets (Pre-Primer, Primer, Gr.1, Gr. 2, Gr.3 Dolch List – 2 types of font)
- Letter Cover (Upper and Lower case)
- Rainbow Letters
- Sight Word Tally (Pre-Primer, Primer, Gr.1, Gr. 2, Gr.3 Dolch List)
- Sight Words I made (to use with letter tiles) (3 letter words, 4 letter words, 5 letter words, 6 letter words, various word lengths from 2 to 6) (4 words or 8 words made in total on sheet)
- Sight Words I made (to use with magnetic letters – 5 words or 10 words)
- Printing Practice
- 2 Suggested weekly packages




Here is a more detailed explanation of each center:












There are lots of different combinations you could create for your center booklets.  You can find the Literacy Center Package in my TPT store at the following link:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Literacy-Center-Station-Worksheets-for-Center-Booklets-1972595


Enjoy!
Kemble :-)

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