I can’t believe I have time to blog during the week! Well the TRUTH is, my hubby and kids are watching the Bronco, Chargers #football game…. (hip-hip-hooray! Yeah, Go Chargers!) And GUESS WHAT??? I’m not your biggest football fan, I’d rather be doing other stuff… like blogging or anything but sit there and watch a game…. bleh! Great opportunity or excuse for me to be in front of the computer blogging away (now this is HIP-HIP-HOORAY!! for me!! Yeah, Go Blogging!!!).
So tonight I want to give you a view of what my morning routine looks like in my classroom and share some ideas about our center routines with you. First, I’m a firm believer that every student/child, needs a strong foundation in phonemic and phonological awareness. These foundations and skills give all students the strategies necessary to decode, chunk, segment, blend, isolate, and discriminate sounds and text during reading and eventually become great readers. Comprehension and fluency strategies are secondary to these skills and are usually developed by the end of first grade beginning of second grade, although it is possible by the end of kindergarten.
We begin our “Letter of the Week” centers every morning at 8:15 and run to 9:50. The first 6 weeks of school, I front load the students with all of the alphabet all at once and they do tub and play activities to get them used to or routines and procedures and get us ready for learning. These centers usually revolve around, letter matching on alphabet charts, tracing and cutting practice, coloring (a lot of coloring), puzzles, and abcmouce.com on the computers.
During this time I also begin to introducing more specific skill aligned centers that revolve around phonemic and phonological awareness, by the 7th – 9th week of school we are working independently and with some guidance.
I have 5 center rotations that are 12 minutes long and I’m included in that rotation. I introduce the centers whole group on the carpet by telling the students “Today we will learn about letters. Letters have to important parts that we need to know and understand in order to become good readers and writers. They are letter names and letter sounds.”
We then sing 3 different alphabet songs, then I model and explain what their centers will be and look like. And here they go:
1. Letter Concept Map
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This center revolves around initial sounds concept maps. Remember how the first 6 weeks of school I have tub/play centers? Well, during that time for a whole week, I do mini lessons on what the “independent” centers will eventually become. I teach, model, explain, scaffold, and then release them for practice and set clear expectations on how and what they are suppose to look like to work independently. A total of 5 centers that rotate every 10- 12 minutes. As they get used to them, I extend the time to a max of 18 – 20 minute rotations by the end of the year.
2. Interactive Journal Letter Matching
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Once again for a whole week, I work with them at this center. I teach them how to take out and put away their interactive journals. How to take turns taking them out and putting them away. How we actually use them, what the sections are for, and how we find the “next clean page.” We color things that are not suppose to be cut off in RED, because RED means STOP, and they have a visual cue for it. Then we trace all the areas we are suppose to cut around and over in GREEN because GREEN means Go. Other wise kids will cut around every black line they see ( I learned the hard way.) To learn more about my interactive journals click HERE.
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