Here are what my centers look like!! Of course always a work in progress. I have 5 areas. In my Daily 5 they do: writing, word work, read to self, read to someone/listen to reading and art. (I combine read to someone and listen to reading because sometimes I think they just want to hear a story or they might not feel comfortable reading to anyone that they can at that time.)
I added art and I always tie to to reading, word work or writing. At times they write a story about what they made, use words for the week to tell about their art or read and then illustrate. There is always a project for them so they practice following step by step instructions.
For word work I have a list of words we are working on that week - spelling and sight words and vocabulary. I also have a TON of tic-tac-toe boards, legos with words to build sentences, Florida Center games, stamps, magnets made from scrabble tiles, sight word candy land, sight word go fish, sight word puzzles for the week I made from
Wordle, and more!
In my writing center I have every kind of paper you can imagine!! I have examples of different kinds of writing they can do. I have spacemen, story starters, wordless books, envelopes and a writers checklist for capitals, spaces and so. Most weeks there is something they have to compete in writing before they can free write. It typically deals with practicing editing. They also have to publish a story every 9 weeks so often they take this time to work a story for publishing so they can use a computer to type.
I have a list of choices of things they can do in case they forget. I also have reading reminders posters, a list of books we have read as a class, lots of leveled books, individual book bags, pointers, individual CD players, books on tape and access to the computer for Tumblebooks and other site that have authors and stars reading books.
