Literacy Centers (Aimee Frantzen)

When I first googled "literacy center ideas" I decided that because I would like to teach first grade I would aim my first search towards activities appropriate for that grade level. The sites that began to list on google were mostly teacher created sites talking about the literacy center activities these teachers do in their own classroom. The first site I found is listed below:

http://www.teachingheart.net/LC.htm
One of the ideas I really liked on this site was more of an organizational strategy as opposed to a literacy center idea, but being the organizational freak I am, I really appreciated the idea. This teacher has literacy center time every day from 9:30-10:50 in her classroom. On each student's desk she has permanantly placed a colored dot. The dot corresponds with a center on her literacy centers chart, and the dot changes positions on the chart everyday so each student does a different center everyday. This also seems like a great idea because you can assign dots by children's reading levels.

Another idea I really liked on this website was this teacher's "listening center". This eacher bought books on tape and cheap walkmans at Wal-Mart but talks about another school she's heard of that recieved ipods for each student - if you had an ipod, teacher's could easily create and sync a playlist for each week's "listening center" with a few short stories recorded. The teacher then has the students fill out a worksheet on the story they have listened to. The worksheet includes drawing a picture of their favorite part in the story and then writing one sentence to describe the picture.

-I bookmarked this site for future use, it could make a great teaching resource.

For my second search I opted for second grade ideas, this is what I found:
http://hill.troy.k12.mi.us/staff/bnewingham/myweb3/literacy_centers%20Final.htm

This page had pictures to go along with ideas and you saw this teacher's students actually doing the literacy center activities.

Although I find alphabetizing tedious and unnecessary at this point, especially because dictionaries can now be accessed online now I still find it important that kids know and understand how to alphabetize, this helps to build their literacy. This website had a cool alphabetizing activity where the kids would sit down and alphabetize pictures of vegetables with words on it, this activity was called "vegetable stew".

Lastly, I really liked the "making words" activity. Students had teacher selected magnetic letters and in partners played a game where they had an certain amount of time to "make the most words", this is a great idea and kids will have fun with it.