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Literacy
Centers:
Belief
Statement:
I believe that
children learn through social constructivism and so when I
prepare Literacy Centers for my classroom, I look for ways
to have children engage in print in meaningful ways with a
partner or two. I believe that children are capable of
constructing and deconstructing print on their own with
supported classroom strategies. I believe children can learn
to read from huge words like parasauralophus or
protceratops just as easy, or perhaps easier than from
words like cat or mat. I believe that the
content of the literacy centers should be related to their
interests and linked to emergent projects for the highest
levels of motivation. Because each choice or response in the
center task must be negotiated and tested, it has a
different level of thinking and engagement - that is, there
is a right answer - but there must be negotiation and
thinking to find it. This is so different from the
traditional work sheet.
Types of
Literacy Centers:
The type of
center I create is dependent on the skills of the children.
For example, in early Gr. 1, much time is spent on phonemic
awareness and linking phonemes to letters, but with a couple
of months, we move into Project Literacy Centers. I usually
have 8 - 10 centers in use at one time; each contained in a
plastic tub so it can be mobile. I change the groupings of
children dependent on my goals - but can be same level
readers or one more skilled paired with one more challenged.
They must engage together in dialogue to complete the
center. Types of centers include: Word-Picture match, hunts
(looking for an image based on clues), writing lists,
researching for stats (hockey), stamping, searching for
words in texts, sorting or categorizing, and so on. The
variety depends on the needs of my class and the
strategies/skills I want to develop.
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Sample
Literacy Center:
This is one of 8 - 10 literacy centers that I developed for
a study of Africa - for use in a Gr. 1 class in November. It
is a word - picture match game printed on Card Stock. The
task is to match the word card with an image that matches
it. The skills needed are categorization, initial sounds,
background vocabulary, visual literacy and beginning
decoding skills.
Africa -
images and
words |
