AdvanceBlog

One of my favorite strategies for instruction and classroom management was the use of learning centers.  Learning centers being the simultaneous use of a variety of distinctively different learning activities with varying levels of difficulty.

My comfort zone hovered around four to five learning centers with five to six students working at each of them.  The most challenging center would be the newest skill / objective that I taught. I would actively teach / guide / facilitate at this learning center.  A second center that required a balance of input from me and independence from the students would be located nearby for my periodic interjections.  The remaining activities would require student independence on skills they needed to perfect.  For example, here are a few centers I would use during language arts time:

A) My Center – Reading aloud from reading level texts

B) Somewhat Independent Center – Creative writing with prompts and guidelines

C) Independent Center A – Writing spelling words, dividing them phonetically and using them in a sentence

D) Independent Center B – Sentence Pyramids beginning with a word (a noun), then making a two word sentence with it, then a three word sentence, a four word sentence and so on.

Using learning centers promoted a level of on-going activity in my class and was also a reflection of how I like to work.  I would give the directions for each center to the whole group before designating which particular center I wanted them to start.  I would set a timeline that would encourage student accountability as they were responsible for completing all the centers within the designated time.

Learning centers really help me cover a significant amount of curriculum while also permitting whole and small group instruction.  As an instructional and classroom management strategy, I found learning centers to be tremendously effective.

I must share that while teaching kindergarten, one of the learning center activities was to create an invitation for parents to attend an after-school event.  The invitation was to be crafted in the form of a personalized letter complete with a heading, a salutation and a complementary closing line.  The closing was “Love” and the student’s name.  After I gave the directions and modeled how completing this activity would look, one of my boys raised his hand with a question formed as the most hilarious statement uttered from a five year old.  He said, “Mr. Duncan, I don’t know how to make love.”  The classroom assistant and I burst into blushing laughter.  This boy was referring to his disappointment with making the letter L backwards.  At the learning center, I was able to properly demonstrate the proper way to make an L when writing love – truly kids say the darndest things.