Literacy Center Ideas- Jamie Patton

When I searched 'Literacy Center Ideas' the first site that popped up was http://www.teachingheart.net/LC.htm. The teacher had posted her ideas for literacy centers in the classroom. Some of them I had never heard of before but some of her ideas were very similar to a few activities we have done in E342! In the teacher's "Making Words" center, she described a game the children would play where they were given a set of letters and then had to make 3, 4, and 5 letter words out of them. It reminded me a lot of the activity with the cut out letters from last week's class. But unlike our class, the game in this class goes on to tell the students to choose two of the words they have made and form a sentence with them. I thought that was a clever way to end the activity.
The next website, http://www.busyteacherscafe.com/literacy_stations/vocabularycenter.htm, talked about a vocabulary center idea where the kids can play vocabulary bingo. I thought that this was an interesting idea and a fun way to get children to work on their vocabulary skills. I remember that I loved playing bingo as a kid, and I think that everyone learns more effectively when they are doing something they enjoy.
The last site I looked at had an idea that I thought may be a good center for the first few weeks of school. The teacher had the students at this center do a walk through of the classroom and list all the words that they can find and identify. This is a great way for students to really get to know the layout of the classroom and understand where and what everything is. The site that I found this idea is called http://www.msrossbec.com/literacy_index.html.
It was a little more difficult than I expected to find sites with really good ideas for literacy centers. Many websites had lengthy lists of ideas, but many weren't quality ideas or had more to do with math or science centers. The three sites I have listed, however, have many good ideas listed.