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Literacy centers are extremely useful in classrooms because it can subject students to numerous different activities while the teacher works in small group. As a warning, the expectations at centers need to be established and practiced so that it becomes a well-oiled machine, otherwise, management can detract from the effectiveness.
Literacy centers should be divided into separate areas, where each area focuses on a certain aspect of the story currently being studied. Time should be limited to about 10-15 minutes at each to keep students interested and busy. The number of centers and time depends on class size, physical room for centers, and difficulty/number of concepts at each center. One center may focus on phonics/word patterns within the story (rhyming, long-a, etc.) and have word building activities. The next might focus on story elements, like setting, point of view, genre, etc. There may also be centers focusing on character development, predictions, compare/contrast to other stories, concepts like summarizing/main idea or genre, and writing about the story. More ideas are listed below:
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