Hi everyone!

Rebecca, Victoria, Lisa, Christy and I all attended The Successful Literacy Centers for Differentiated Learning presented by Christine Sowada.  Christine’s website

The first thing I notice is the overhead projector!  In this day and age?!?  I am guessing this will not be high tech!

What is a center?  A small area of your classroom where one or more students work independently on an activity or activities.  It is an activity that introduces, reinforces, or extends a skill or topic of your curriculum.  Most commonly the centers are around the perimeter of the classroom.  While there is nothing wrong with that, it limits what you can do.  We also struggle with the children working independently, they always have questions.  Also we tend to use them to reinforce a concept that we have already presented.  We should also use them to challenge our brighter students and help our children who are struggling.  So in the end, why should we have centers??  To teach the kids to work together and to be independent.  It gives the teacher time to spend with small groups of students on specific skills.

Now for the difficulties.  How do you create many activities for each week?  How to create learning centers for differentiated learning?  How to organize the centers?  How to keep the learning centers independent so the student can complete the actives with minimal help?  How to make smooth transitions between centers?  How to assign  centers to students?  How to keep a record of activities completed by students?  How to maintain order at the centers?  How to create centers that can be completed in a determined amount of time?

So here is the plan:  learning stations.  A learning station is an area of your classroom that includes several learning centers.  Students are assigned a learning station and must remain in that station until a determined amount of time set by the teacher.  Students move from station to station in small groups.  Each station may include:  daily required assignment, optional center or senters and on-going activity.  This idea helps keep the kids in one area for a longer period of time and keeps them from bouncing around the classroom too much.

The first step is to divide your classroom into areas - one for each of your stations.  The number of stations you decide on is determined by how long your students will spend in stations each day and by how much you hope to teach or reinforce in the stations.  It really becomes personal preference and what works for you.Maybe you only want to have 4 stations and each child will to go each station during the course of the week.  This gives you a day to introduce concepts that the children will need during the week in stations.  The minimum amount of time a group should stay in a station is 30minutes and the max should be around an hour and 15 minutes.   One center must be with you, the teacher.  This is the time when you go over what the kids will see next week in their stations.  This is most important with the younger kids.  You need to make sure that they know the directions and concepts so they can work independently in the other stations.

I think the station idea is a good idea.  It limits movement during the course of the center time.  I do think that her center ideas, the actual activities she showed us how to make are outdated.  The children in my classroom would not stay engaged for very long with file folder games and other home made activities.

Kathy