Literacy Centers-Alex N.

http://www.busyteacherscafe.com/literacy_stations/main.htm

After learning about literacy centers during class I was a little confused about how they worked. This blog really helped me understand the purpose of literacy centers and also what literacy centers consist of. This site in particular was really helpful and I recommend it to new teachers because it gave a lot of information on how to set up the centers, how to manage them, and also, ideas for what to put in to the centers. The thing I liked most about this site was how it explained how to manage the centers, or choosing who goes to which center and when they go to them. The site gave examples from teachers and even included pictures of teachers charts that they use in their classroom to manage their own centers. I also liked that this site gave links to other sites in case you did not get all the information you wanted.
Another thing that I liked about this site was it gave examples of activities that you could do at each center. This website broke down different categories that you might want as centers such as, Independent Reading Center, Word Work Center, Writing Center, Listening Center, etc. Within each of these centers there were ideas of what to include to help support the learning that is going on. Under the Word Work center some of the ideas were a word sort, a bingo game, alphabet tiles, or a word web. Also in addition to giving ideas on what to include in your centers, this website also provided worksheets that students can fill out while at their centers.

http://www.ourschoolfamily.com/Literacy%20Centers.htm

This website was also helpful, but it did not go into as much detail as the previous one. This site included pictures of what a specific teacher does in her literacy centers. I liked this site because it did give examples of what to do, but unlike the previous site it did not really give a wide variety of different centers. Like the last site this one did include at least one link to another site to get more ideas which I find is a good idea. It allows the person reading with more flexibility to pick ideas that they like. Overall I think literacy centers are necessary in a classroom to guarantee the teacher to perform guided reading activities with small groups. Both of these sites were beneficial to gaining an understanding of how to introduce and use literacy centers in your classroom.