Treasured Tip of the Week - Literacy Centers!!!!!

I've been asked to share my Literacy Center and been meaning to do so since school started but did not find the time to do it.  So here it is... at last :)

This is pur centers display. (hooks came from Ikea $5 each rack)

The majority of our centers our students made. I'm a firm believer that with the right vision & guidance the kids can create anything. And anything they create they have ownership over!
(and lets be real.... I just don't have the time to create all of these centers myself...not to mention these kids are far more creative then me!) I provide the kids with a rubric, they break into groups, and here are the results!!!!

We have several different types of centers:

1. student created Benchmarks Board Games

2. Teacher Created centers:

    i. listening center

    ii. vocabulary/word work center

    iii. poetry center

    iv. reading in the content areas cener

    v. independent reading response center

    vi. Hot Topics center

    vii. skill & strategy center

 3. Student created Literacy Centers
     i. Genre Centers
     ii. Author Centers
     iii. Theme Centers

We use canvas bags for our centers because they can be easily decorated 

(by the students of course) and easily stored!

The first type of center - student created Benchmarks Board Games

is a spin off of a portfolio folable I learned how to create of of brown paper bags 

at the Bag Ladies Workshop several years ago.

The kids turn the bag into a portfolio, use a board game template based on a popular board game they find online or create their own original one, and create the game pieces, question cards, and spinners.

They also included typed rules & instructions for their game.

The rule was that they had to play the game as a group first to make sure it worked!

I provided my students with a project rubric to work with, that included a step by step guidelines to what was expected of them. (I searched my computer and can't seem to find it :( )

Here are some of their creations:

I used a similar concept last year and since I teach 3 grade levels; 6th, 7th, and 8th

each grade was assigned a topic.

8th graders were responsible for creating lit. bags revolving popular teen authors of their choice

7th graders were responsible for creating lit bags revolving a genre & subgenre of their choice

6th graders were responsible for creating lit bags revolving a theme.

Each lit. bag had to be decorated on the outside and include the following:

titles of books under that category, review of two books the students read to prepare for the project, a puzzle, and a game or activity that other students can interact with while using this center.

Here are the rubrics I provided the students with:

Lit. Bag Rubric - 6th

Lit. Bag Rubric - 7th

Lit. Bag Rubric - 8th

Here are some pictures of a few of the bags my kids created.

The last sets of centers are ones I created :) 

 (and are nowhere near as exciting as the one's my studentends created)

    i. listening center

    ii. vocabulary/word work center

    iii. poetry center

    iv. reading in the content areas cener

    v. independent reading response center

    vi. Hot Topics center

    vii. skill & strategy center

We LOVE our Centers Time!!!!!!!

Students keep track of the different activities they complete in the Independent Work section of their S.T.A.R.Book notebook .

I look forward to reading you feedback, suggestions, questions, and genreal thoughts about these centers :)