Literacy Stations

I thought I would share my literacy stations. I have seen such awesome stations on other blogs but mine are a little different. I have 6 stations- library, abc, listening, writing, spelling, and fluency/poetry. I have a ten month old so I try to make the centers as easy as possible to maintain. Plus I cannot stand copying things all the time, so none of these centers require any copying. Yay! (Well, except the first time you make something, you might have to copy it.) I do have a lot of materials that I have made and laminated over the years so it's a lot easier to get the centers ready every week than it used to be. I can usually do it in under an hour. -- IF I don't get distracted and forget what I was doing (which happens pretty often).

Library Station

I have a forest theme for our classroom library. I bought the big chair, shelf and bench at an art show.

   Students read out of their basket independently. Each child's name is on the basket.

The kids also read the big book for the week. This week, they are doing an activity I learned a few years ago at a workshop. They will read the big book once and then write words that begin with l-blends, r-blends, s-blends and ending blends on little sticky notes. Then they stick their words onto the chart. Previous classes have loved this activity. The chart is laminated, so I use a vis-a-vis marker to write the skill and just erase at the end of the week. This goes well with lots of sorting activities.

I have a binder of poetry all the kids can read. Plus, they read the big songs and poems for the week. I also have lots of readers' theatres I put in the station. (I will write another post about that sometime.) I have little figures and animals the kids use to act out the parts. They LOVE readers' theatres.

ABC/Word Work

There are two activities the kids do each week. One is a fill in the blank pocket chart. The other activity is making words. I put pictures for a skill (this week's short u) and the kids spell it in chalk and use magnetic letters.

These are pictures from a phonics book I cut, laminated and put a magnet on. I keep them in labeled baggies. That way it doesn't take me long at all to change them out. The first year was time-consuming but easy peasy after that.

Listening-  The students just listen to a book. I have a ton of listening center books.

Writing Station

The kids have a writing bucket with supplies. Their task varies from week to week. This week, they are retelling one of our Reading Street stories (A Fox and a Kit). I cut sheet protectors and put magnets on the back so I can slide the new ones in and out easily.

Spelling Station

In this station, the task is the same every week. The kids build their spelling words for the week and write them in little notebooks. I have lots of different kinds of small notebooks. I found some really cute Halloween ones I'll put out next week. They all share the same notebooks. I have 3 rotations for centers. When I ring the bell, the students from the writing and spelling stations bring me their work and I quickly check it. If as student finishes early in the spelling station, he or she writes a sentence with each word.

This is a picture of the mini journals I got at Dollar Tree. I have lots of different types of manipulatives for building words- cards, magnetic letters, foam, tile, cubes that they put together and letters that go through pipe cleaners. I change the kind of letters each week.

Fluency Station

The kids read different fluency passages that we have practiced first. Mostly, I use sentences from our Reading Street series. When they are done with the passages, they can read the big poems, little poems and fry phrases.

I stapled page protectors  onto butcher paper so the kids could stand while reading. Plus they're easy to change out each week.

I had to repeat the directions one more time because they just weren't listening!               

 These are really boring  decodable sentences from our series. They are really for assessing the phonics skill (and I use them for that first) but the kids like to practice timing themselves.

                                                   fry phrases and big poem



Well, I think that's all of them. Whew! That took longer than I thought. I hope someone out there finds this helpful and can use some of these ideas. Please comment on how you run centers so I can get some ideas too. :)