centers

Word Work, Free Writing, Letter Focus, and Free Reading

Centers. It's just how we roll in Room 1 Kindergarten. Sometimes it is a stretch to find time to actually do our centers, but I try to make it work three days a week. As the end of the year crunch comes though, I may need to cut back to two days a week. For now though, we spend one hour rotating through four different centers to help with pre-reading and emergent reader skills. Today, my little learners worked on stamping their sight words for the week, using proper sentence structure, completing a letter Gg mini-book, and independent reading. 

Today was the first day that I broke out my letter stamp collection and the kiddos loved it. I had gotten a set at the beginning of the year, but with only two stamps for each letter, I was unsure of how to prevent arguments over different letters. A month or so ago though, my problem was solved. I found alphabet stamp sets for 97 cents a piece! With six copies of each letter the stamping was smooth sailing (with the exception of actually locating the letters that were needed in the jumble of 156 stamps).

I was impressed by my kiddos in their free writing center. Most remembered the basic sentence structures that we have been practicing all year - a capital letter first, finger space between words, and punctuation at the end. Some wrote multiple sentences and most remembered how to spell their sight words. Since we have been working on sounding out words, I was also excited to see what everyone came up with on their own in terms of letter sound recognition.

Our letter focus and independent reading centers happen almost daily. My students are getting better at remaining focused on their reading for the whole 15-minute center rotation, and most are self motivating enough to remain on task. 

I know I've said it before, but I really do have a pretty impressive group of kiddos this year. They have made a lot of progress. While I may forget it sometimes in moments of frustration, they always end up surprising me in the end.