Since I already have lots of math on the blog, I thought I’d focus in on easy to implement literacy centers. Here are some ideas of what you could use in your centers that students rarely tire of and have low prep for you!
Organization
Let’s start with organizing our students. I tend to do something similar to “Daily 5” literacy rotations, but I found that having so many centers led to me needing all their work in one place. Enter our “divider tabs”! We’re able to organize all our literacy centers into one notebook! I can collected them at the end of the day or week and check their work.
Link to Editable Dividers
Link to Editable Labels
Task Cards
These are the absolute best once you teach your students how to use them! You can even teach them how to self check or use their work as a grade. Task cards are not scarce in the teacher world and if you haven’t heard or seen them, you really must be living under a rock, but I’ll forgive you and take the credit for enlightening you! I have a blog post with all the task card ideas for you too!
Click the picture to see 10 Ways to Use Task Cards.
Link to task cards
Fluency Roll & Reads
Fluency is a big deal in the younger grades, but it’s a somewhat “mindless” tasks that us teachers don’t usually want to spend time doing when we could be teaching new concepts. These Roll & Reads are ALWAYS a hit. My students never tire of them. (I also have a blog post specifically for ways to practice fluency)
Big Books
Friends, if you can add big books in some way to your library, your students will LOVE you and them. I was lucky enough to have a school subscription to Scholastic News which would give a teacher version of the magazine. I laminated them and have kept them in great condition for years. If you don’t have that, Scholastic now sells big books! A library with or without big books is a must in centers and honestly, I just let them read for fun, any book and level!
Technology
Technology can be a blessing and a curse, am I right? I am all for tech, but I am not a fan of random websites to just play game, I offer that as a reward or at home practice. I like to choose a specific program online or activities through Google Classroom/Google Slides. One of my favorite FREE websites (on computers, not tablets) for teaching reading is Teach Your Monster to Read. I’m literally obsessed and my students love it and learn!
If your students have access to Google Classroom, digital word work is a game changer! There are 11 different phonics pattern activities that can be done independently and submitted to you as the teacher for accountability.
If you’re looking for some easy math center ideas, check them out below:
In the “math tubs” blog post, I have simple math center ideas that don’t take a lot of prep and are some class favorites!
In the “how to” math blog post, I talk about how I shifted from full rotations, to a modified skills based small group time. This simplicity of implementation let’s me meet the needs of my struggling students.
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