The document provides guidance on establishing and managing effective literacy centers in the classroom, including planning activities aligned with curriculum, modeling procedures, and ensuring students stay focused through structured routines, clear expectations, and engaging independent or small group work that practices literacy skills. Effective centers require advance preparation of organized materials and activities, as well as strong classroom management to keep students on task.

1. L i t e r ac y
Ce n t e r s
F ac i l i t at o r :
D awn L e o n ar d o

3. What are they good for anyway!?
• Having centers is a useful classroom
practice that enables you to do any type of
small group instruction or assessment, but
the time children spend in centers should
be focused, productive, and dare I say…
INTERESTING! Centers are for the
student to practice skills; instruction
happens in the small groups that meet
with the teacher during center time.

4. Two things are necessary to make
centers work in any classroom:
• Planning for a
preparing center
activities and
materials in advance
• Good management
skills

5. Setting the Stage
• Make enough room and materials for
either independent or small group learning
activities

6. Setting the Stage
• Each center should be neat, clean, and
organized
• Areas should be well- labeled

7. Setting the Stage
• Activities should be rotated weekly or
biweekly
• Center rules should be posted and
discussed daily

8. Setting the Stage
• Centers should be introduced by the
teacher, who models and explains each
activity (some teachers introduce one at a
time others introduce them all at the start
of the week)

9. Setting the Stage
• After use of the centers, all or most of the students work
should be posted in an organized, planned and attractive
display
• Student groups should be multi level or heterogeneous
groupings so that more advance students can help
struggling learners

10. Setting the Stage
• Some type of recording or assessment piece should be used for the
students’ use of centers
• Centers should have a rubric or control posted so children can check their
own work

11. Management Tips
• Centers are not a free for all. Students should be on
topic.
• Center management is a classroom management. This
should start on day one. Spending the first several
weeks of school modeling and practicing classroom
routines will give you months of engaged, rewarding
learning
• Model, model, model! Students need to see and clearly
understand what is expected of them
• Make clear signs
• Have a sign at each center indicating how many
students are allowed to be there. Encourage students to
self monitor.

12. Management Tips Cont.
• Rotate centers weekly or bi-weekly. Always model each
new activity – young students are still learning about how
to translate skills and behaviors and need your guidance.
• Make sure each center has simple directions
• Make sure materials have clear storage spaces so
students can clean up after themselves
• Label, label, label. Use pictures for pre-readers.
• “I’m done, what do I do now!?” Establish activities for
students to do when they have finished their center work
(i.e. read, draw, write a letter to a friend, etc.)
• Aim for rigid routines and save the creativity for
the activities .

13. Three Steps to Teaching Classroom Procedures
From Harry and Rosemary Wong’s The First Days of School: How to be an Effective
Teacher
• Explain
• Rehearse
• Reinforce

14. Explain
• Define the procedures in concrete terms
• Demonstrate the procedure; don’t just tell
• Demonstrate a complex procedure step by
step

15. Rehearse
• Have students practice the procedure
• Have students repeat the procedure until it
becomes a routine
• Have students perform the procedure
automatically without supervision

16. Reinforce
• Determine whether students have learned the procedure
• Do they need further explanation, demonstration, or
practice?
• Re-teach the correct procedure and give corrective
feedback.
• Praise students when rehearsal is acceptable. “I like how
you did that.”

17. Assigning Students to Centers
• The teacher may assign small, heterogeneous
groups of children to each area using a
schedule. These groups should be rotated
through the different centers throughout the
week.
• A choice time may be established once the class
is accustomed to the center routine. Pocket
charts, pinwheel diagrams, clothespin lines with
children’s name can be used to show students
the area to which they have been designated

18. What’s Happening?
How do you know if work is happening in the centers?
• Each center activity should be designed with some level
of accountability: For grades 1-2 students should
produce some kind of finished work, this is not
necessary in K.
• Students should be given the chance to check their own
work: Sometimes putting a control at centers teaches the
students to self monitor and avoid interrupting the
teacher.
• Noise Level: It is ok if there is noise and students are
bustling about! The sound of effective center time is work
not chaos though. It is a time for the students to work
together on a similar task, they need to be able to talk.
Just make sure to have a system in place to regulate the
noise level (inside voice, 2 inch voice, etc)

19. Integrating Curriculum
• Each new unit of instruction offers specific
language experiences that extend a
students knowledge and understanding.

20. Things to Remember
• Prepare a system to assign students to centers
• Decided how you will you will introduce the
centers
• Model activities with students
• Review rules
• Model how to use the materials
• Model how to begin and end each center
• Model what to do when you are finished
• Incorporate some elements of the curricular into
the center to give students hands on
experiences with the content

21. Work Center Ideas: Writing Center
• Purpose: To provide students with the
opportunities to express themselvese
through writing. To explore the writing
process and to se writing as a means of
communication
• Materials: A common table for students,
name chart, alphabet chart, Word Wall,
writing tools, various types of paper, index
cards, folders, book making materials

22. Writing Center Cont.
• Literacy Based Activities: All Writing Center activities
should be purposeful and provide authentic writing
experiences. Students can:
– Write responses to books read aloud or to personal experiences
– Retell stories or tell their own versions of stories. This
encourages students to incorporate book language into their
own language use.
– Write letters
– Make lists
– Make books
– Contribute to a weekly class newsletter
– Write emails of stories if your class has a computer
– Respond to open ended questions
– Write their favorite words

23. Work Center Ideas: Language Arts/
Word Study/ABC Center
• Purpose: To promote recognition and
usage of word building and decoding
principles, to study language use in
different contexts
• Materials: Magnetic letters, alphabet
books, matching and sorting letters,
writing materials, word building games,
rhymen games, color games, word cards,
parts of speech cards

24. Language Arts/Word Study/ABC
Center Cont.
• Literacy Based Activities:
– Word Building practice with a buddy
– Making words with a letter set
– Sorting words according to specific criteria
– Sequencing activities taken from books to practice
retelling
– Match cut out words to a sentence strip. Then they
can use the word to write new sentences
– Tongue Twisters
– Genre Study Exercises

25. Work Center Ideas:
Reading/Writing the Room
• Purpose: To expose students To the carious
forms of print including environmental print
• To foster independent reading of meaningful
print
• To encourage a love of reading
• Materials: A classroom loaded with print – word
charts, name charts, poems, favorite stories,
words wall, graphs, pointers, clip boards, writing
tools

26. Reading/Writing the Room Cont.
• Literacy Based Activities:
– Baskets of pointers should be available to the
students near the materials to be read. Effective
pointers might include rulers, dowels, chopsticks,
oversized pencils, etc.
– Students use a pointer and independently read all
of the print displayed around the room. They can
read their own group written versions of favorite
stories of their own posted work.
– Students can work in pairs, with each student
listening as the other “reads” the room.

27. Work Center Ideas: Art Center
• Purpose: To allow students the
opportunity to express themselves
creatively and to experience literacy
through art.
• Materials: Crayons, pencils, paint, colored
paper, felt, magazines, markers, scissors,
and any material that will help students
create artwork related to classroom
literature and curricular themes.

28. Art Center Cont.
• Literacy Based Activities:
– Create illustrations for familiar stories
– Create a mural that tells a storyy or that
illustrates a read aloud
– Let students create drawings, paintings, or
collages to illustrate their own stories (maybe
ones that were done in the writing center)