Guide
Name
Centres/Stations
Description
Productive and enjoyable learning centres offer students opportunities to have meaningful dialogue and informal conversation with peers in a cooperative and unstructured setting.
Purposes Specific Learning Outcomes LICT Descriptors How To Do Related Information
Learning centres require a collaborative culture where students share, take turns, and help one another. It is important to provide a variety of learning centres that encourage students to talk about what they have discovered and learned from others. Learning centres should be changed frequently to provide a variety of experiences for students. Have clipboards with a variety of paper and interesting writing implements available at centres to allow students to record information that they have shared and learned at that centre. Students may draw, sketch, label diagrams, or write words to express and communicate their ideas.
Variations
Art Centre: Students choose from a variety of media such as paints, felt markers, plastercine, or coloured paper for collages to represent favourite books or characters. Ask students to share representations informally with a peer at the centre, with a partner, a small group, or the whole class. Classroom Library: A variety of reading resources needs to be available in the classroom including fiction and non-fiction books, magazines, and media resources. A classroom library should contain a permanent collection of favorites and a changing selection of theme-related titles. Students need to have access to familiar books over an extended period of time so that they can return to old favorites again and again. If possible provide different versions of the same story and display books written and illustrated by the students. Access to a classroom library will help students to develop good lifelong reading habits. In addition to the classroom library, print and media resources should be visible and available throughout the classroom. Classroom Pets: Students learn about realistic animal behaviour through the observation and care of small classroom pets. Studetns engage in literacy activities by recording aspects of the pet's behaviour such as feeding habits, growth, or sleeping patterns. Records of their observations can be in the form of pictures, tallies, or media recordings. Classroom Pets: Students learn about realistic animal behaviour through the observation and care of small classroom pets. Studetns engage in literacy activities by recording aspects of the pet's behaviour such as feeding habits, growth, or sleeping patterns. Records of their observations can be in the form of pictures, tallies, or media recordings. Drama Centre: Students engage in dramatic dialogue, storytelling, and representation using a variety of simple costumes, dress-up clothes, and props. Students may choose to create their own texts, or they may retell their version of a familiar story. Link to Dramatic Representation/Role Play Š 2007 Manitoba Education, Citizenship and Youth Created with Curriculum Navigator, - Page 1 -
Guide
Drawing Centre: Students create pictures using a variety of media. Conference with students to help students express and communicate their information about their picture (help them write or scribe for them). A bulletin board may be used to display pictures. Students may have free choice or represent a theme in their pictures. Exploring Letters, Words, and Sounds Centre: Students independently use a variety of manipulative and writing materials to explore and experiment with letters and sounds. Students may engage in specific activities such as writing their names or building a memorable word from a story, such as the name of a favourite character (using different types of letters). Suggestions for manipulatives: sponge letters, magnetic letters, letter cards, letter tiles, cereal/macaroni letters Suggestions for writing materials: felt pens, crayons, pencils, letter stamps, chalk boards, and paper Extended Learning Centre: Students use the provided materials at centres for activities which are carefully planned by the teacher to extend students' learning. These activities should be introduced to the class through modeling. I Wonder Centre: Students bring a photograph or object that they want to know more about to this centre. Conference with the students to find out what they want to know. Assist students in finding answers to their questions. Listening Centre: Students explore new books as a follow-up to shared reading or read aloud activity by listening to tapes as they follow along. Book tapes cue students when to turn the page and help students to focus on how the words and illustrations of a text connect with each other. Students begin to associate the sound of the text with the accompanying written text. Sorting Centre: Students choose from a changing variety of objects and sort them independently. Make available materials such as building blocks, attribute blocks, shells, different textured objects, coloured beads, etc. Media Centre: Students are guided in accessing a variety of media sources within the classroom or in the library. The teacher supports the students as they learn to use the resources to gather information which they share, using the media, with other students. This centre may include a listening centre, magazines, slides or film strips, or a photograph file. Signs Centre: Students create signs for labeling centres and other important features in the classroom. Students practice reading the signs and prepare a guided tour of the classroom for potential visitors. Store Centre: Develop a Store Centre with empty products containers. Encourage students to connect logos and pictures with words. Have them prepare shopping lists using logos, pictures, and words or create displays of goods as a link to patterns in mathematics. Discuss the significance of specific safety symbols on common household products. Writing Centre: Provide students with a variety of writing materials such as paper, pencils, crayons, pencil crayons, letter stamps, word stamps, felt markers, chalk and small chalkboards, memo pads, notebooks, blank cards, blank sentence strips, and paper of different sizes and colours. Encourage students to experiment with expressing feelings using drawings or words and to convey thoughts and ideas using a variety of print materials. Act as a scribe when students need support in their attempts to use print to express themselves.
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Guide
Assessment / Think Abouts
Record focused observations on students' growing competence in working independently and in their active listening o their peers: Focused Observation Form blm/ela/g/blm_5 TBLMFocused Observation Form Sample blm/ela/g/blm_5a TI
References Keywords
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