Grade One
Book Worms!
"We're literacy obsessed!"
Welcome to our classroom
Reader's Workshop Literacy Centers
In this section you can read all about our different literarcy centres. Each time the students visit centres they will have the choice of where they'd like to go. However, there are some restrictions: each centre has a designated number of people allowed to work at a time, and each student must fill up their "centre passports". The centre passports allow students to monitor their choices and make sure they are spending equal time at each centre. We as teachers have made sure each student knows how to use each centre, and at the beginning of the year we slowly introduced the centres with mini lessons. As well, each day we decide which centres are open and which are closed, this acts to reinforce the students in exploring every centre.
Shared Reading
At the shared reading centre the students are able to choose a poem or short story with a partner and practice choral reading. The students will present their choice to the class after the reading centre, so it is important for them to read it through a number of times for practice. After repeated readings if the students feel confident they can add illustrations to their reading, or circle vocabulary words that were new to them and think about whether they’d be a good fit for our “Juicy Words Vocabulary Wall”.
Fluency Phones
Word Wall Games
Charts and Big Books
At this center, students use fluency phones constructed out of plumber’s pipe while reading their “just right” books aloud so that they can hear themselves in our busy classroom. Reading (and rereading) texts at their DRA level is one way that students are able to independently improve fluency and expression in their reading. Each student has personal goals they are working to achieve at this center that will help improve the flow of their reading.
For example, some students are working on reading sight words accurately and automatically, while others are working on paying attention to punctuation as it tells them what kinds of expression the author intends them to use while they are reading. Fluency phones are a fun way to motivate students to really listen to what they sound like while they are reading and reflect upon their strengths and areas of improvement.
Listening
The teacher has a number of short poems and songs printed and laminated, which a pair of students can practice choral reading. The students can use the finger pointers to trace the words as they read. There are also a number of big books that the students can read through with the finger pointers.
Some of the songs and poems that have been coral read as a class will make it to the charts and big books centre. Just like the shared reading centre the students will be able to pick a reading to present to the class.
Word Play
At the listening centres the students are able to choose from a number of audiotapes with corresponding texts. The students are expected to finger trace the words as they are read to them (they can take a googly ring for motivation).
Along with the audio recordings of picture books, there are also recordings of the class choral reading (or singing) poems and songs from the shared reading folders. The students can listen to these recordings and follow along with their shared reading folders. There can be up to two students at the listening centre.
Read-to-Self (with purpose)
This centre allows students to actively engage with the word-wall, and therefore get to know the high frequency words that are so important for fluency. Students can choose to play a number of different games at the word wall. For example, a word wall scavenger hunt where they find and match sight words. Or in pairs they can play sight word tic tac toe, this game has students reading sight words and if they are correct they can put an “x” or “o” over it to try and get 3 (or more) in a row.
At the beginning of the year only the high-frequency word wall is open for this centre, as the students become experts with these words the “Juicy-word” vocabulary word wall can also be used for games. Ideally there will only be two students at this centre at a time.
Printing
At this center, students work with two to four of their peers on activities that focus on the word families that we’ve been working on this year, for example, the /op/, /an/, /ake/, /ate/ families. Currently, we’re working on identifying and manipulating the /ight/ family—we’ve just had a mini-lesson last week where we read a book with many /ight/ words—and so students have the option of playing several games with this family.
We use a variety of games at the center that derive from the Making and Breaking Words at the ABC Center recipe on the Balanced Literacy Diet. This center helps students develop their abilities in spelling and word study, vocabulary and provides practice in using a decoding strategy that we have been working on—mining an unknown word for any word families that we recognize to help us sound out the word. (http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/balancedliteracydiet/Recipe/50253/)
Word Sorts
Computer Reading
Reader's Theatre
Magnetic Letters
Jolly Phonics
The word play centre scaffolds word sorting for students to help them practice their word families, but once they become more confident with these families they can start to explore sorting words without direction.
In the word sort centre students are given cards with words from a number of different spelling families. All the spelling families will be ones that have already been taught in class, during writing workshop or in mini-lessons.
The students will choose how they want to sort the words and make different groups. They should be able to discuss the patterns they have found, no matter how they choose to sort the words. Students may choose to sort their words by onsets, rimes, syllables…etc. We always take a photograph or photocopy the students’ word sorts for them to add to their writing folder. This way they can review word patterns and the teacher can assess understanding. To properly sequence mini-lessons, and for word selection we use the resource “Words Their Way” by Bear et al.
At this center, students work in pairs to make different CVC and sight words using magnetic letters. The consonants are black and the vowels are red in order to distinguish between the sounds of those letters and their placement in words (i.e. words must have a vowel).
We find that this center is helpful for a few of our students who are still having trouble isolating vowel sounds in oral reading and using vowels consistently in their writing. This center targets letter sounds and phonics as well as spelling. This centre is individual, and will only have one student at a time.
At this center, students have the option of using a number of different computer programs and websites from a pre-approved list that has been growing as the year progresses. One website the students enjoy is Starfall (www.starfall.com) which has a variety of engaging activities that help develop skills in phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency and reading comprehension.
After a mini-lesson, where the teacher reads the new script to the students, breaks them up into presentation (mixed ability) groups and discusses the individual parts, the students practice reading their scripts first individually, then with their peers (pairs or small groups) at this center.
To ensure this activity is for fluency development most students would only spend one period at this centre. The role of this centre is to have students practice re-reading their part, not memorizing. There is also a “voice jar” present in this center, where students can pull various expressions out to guide their voice as they practice (for example, they could read with an angry or excited voice).
Another website we use is Raz Kids (www.raz-kids.com) which allows teachers to create individual log-ins for each student that contain a list of “just right” e-books for students to read and play accompanying comprehension activities. This website is a great resource because teachers can log-in to see which books their students have been reading and how they perform on the comprehension tasks. Students love having the independence to choose which program they would like to use and are motivated to read when it involves using technology.
During read-to-self the students are choosing books from their “just right book bag”, which allows for managed choice. Most of the read-to-self activities follow mini-lessons on comprehension strategies. For example, this week students could be working on creating their own story map. Students are also able to review previous mini-lesson activities if they’d like more practice.
At the printing center, small groups of two to three students work independently in their Handwriting without Tears printing books in order to practice proper letter formation.
In our classroom we believe in offering the students opportunities to read independently (or occasionally partner read) as long as there is an activity to support their reading comprehension. This gives independent reading a purpose, and allows the teacher to assess comprehension.
According to Reading Rockets (2014) “labored handwriting creates a drain on mental resources needed for higher-level aspects of writing, such as attention to content, elaboration of details, and organization of ideas”. We teach, and encourage students to practice, handwriting skills so that they have the tools and confidence needed to let their best idea flow freely onto paper.
At this centre, students who are having difficulty grasping letter sounds correspondence can practice their phonics through an interactive activity. This centre won't neccesarily be in every student's passport, as some of our children have already mastered letter sounds and correspondence.
Right now we are using the crocodile game, where students reach into a crocodile’s mouth and pull out a letter. They must say the letter sound (not name) and make the jolly phonics action. There is a poem to go with this game that the students love: “crocodile, crocodile in the lake, I’m going to reach in and see what you ate!”. Some of the cards inside are “SNAP” cards; if a student pulls this one out ALL the letters have to be returned to the crocodile’s belly.
Our jolly phonics chart accompanies this activity as a memory cue for students.