Thanks to his retweet and some great Twitter brainstorming, I was able to settle on these centers for kindergarten and first grade: Read, Retell, Write, Computers, Words, and Explore.Ĭenter Descriptions My centers are pretty basic right now, but at their heart they align fairly easily to CCSS, and reinforce skills they're working on with their classroom teachers. I sent out a plea on Twitter to Matt Gomez, a pretty inspiring Kindergarten teacher (follow him and don't miss his blog ). įor my own purposes, I wanted consistent themes to my centers to help establish routines with the little dudes, and I was stuck on what would be appropriate. You will also find a link to purchase her book on her new site - please don't miss that book if you're just getting started with centers! Cari is also an incredible resource on twitter, follow her. There is no end to the creativity that Cari has and I would love to be a student in her library! You can find Cari's blog (the blog moved - her old blog was ).
I wish, when I was first getting started with centers a few years back I would have known about her blog. I loved the ideas in the book so much I suggested it to the other elementary TL's in my district for a book study this past summer. Last year, I had read The Centered School Library by Cari Young, and found that I really missed centers. Check out the board below or find it on Pinterestĭesigning the Centers As I was setting out to establish which centers to use, from previous experience, I knew it was going to have to be something easy to manage daily and the activities were going to have to be simple to explain and simple enough for students to be self-directed.
I had been collecting ideas for Library Centers and Short Activities for quite a while on Pinterest, in the hopes that I would some day be able to implement centers again - or at the very least design some "I'm finished what can I do now" strategies, so I figured this was the perfect time to try to put it all to work. I was hoping that I would be able to introduce centers for my younger kids with as much success.
The prospect of adding ten additional minutes with them was, in short, daunting.Īt my previous school, where I had 45 minutes with older grades only, I had done a lot with centers, and they had worked like magic in keeping the kids moving and engaged.
#Kindergarten lesson plans library how to#
I figured out how to establish routines eventually, but have always struggled a bit with fully engaging the attention of the really young ones. (The only reason why I knew to do these things was because I called my cousin Megan, a preschool teacher, and she gave me the magic). I had to do weird stuff like clap my hands to get their attention and say things like "put your bubbles in". Now all of the sudden, there were small little bodies all over the place the expression "herding cats" suddenly had all new meaning to me. I was used to walking into a room and just saying "get your notes out from yesterday". That being said, truth be told, I was completely freaked out about what to do with my kindergartners for 45 minutes.ĭid I mention in my former life, I was a high school English teacher? Four years ago, my first two weeks in an elementary library were a complete culture shock to me. I was thrilled to know that this year I was going to have the extra time to work with my classes on research skills and technology projects while working in more time to allow them to browse the shelves and look at books. It seemed like we would just be getting started into something great when it was time to go. For me, 35 minutes a week, just wasn't enough to pack in all the awesomeness I wanted to achieve. Center Inspiration After much debate at the end of last school year, I was able to get 10 extra minutes added on to each of my classes for this year boosting class library time from 35 minutes a week to 45 minutes a week for my fixed schedule.
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