5 Tips for Year Round Centers
Picture this: engaging classroom centers that you can keep up year-round, with minimal prep and maintenance. Don’t believe you can make it happen? Well, I’m here to tell you it’s possible! Read below for some tips and tricks for making year-round centers work with your ELA content.
There are endless benefits to setting up year-round centers in your classroom! First of all, the amount of time you will save when you stop making centers week after week. After your initial set-up, that area of the room will mostly run itself! You also will save time not having to give directions each week. Once students know how each activity in the center works, they can do everything on their own. Finally, you won’t be searching for ideas every Sunday night. Once your center is set up, your students will consistently be practicing skills and strategies that need repetition.
Below I have compiled 5 tips for setting up an ELA center to run year-round in your classroom:
Selecting Your Center Content
When creating a year-round center, there are a few things to keep in mind. First and foremost, you want to focus on ELA material that students need to practice routinely. Spelling is a great option because each week students will be working on a new spelling pattern. Therefore, you will always have content the students are already working on readily available. You also want to make sure that you place activities in the center that students already know how to do. Introduce any activities you want to include in the center during your whole group, and practice a few times before adding it to the center. This way, students will not have to interrupt you to ask for help.
Organizing and Preparing Materials
Once you have selected the content for your centers, it’s time to start thinking about how you are going to organize and prepare the materials. This is a crucial step in making sure that your centers run smoothly and efficiently.
Ideally, you will do most of the prep work at the beginning of the year. If you are fortunate enough to have parent volunteers, this is a great project for them! If there are activities that need copies, you would want to make sure there are enough copies for multiple students to use for at least several weeks at a time, if not longer. If anything needs to be cut/laminated, now is the time to do it. Fill a tray with notebook paper that is to be used in that center only. Provide pencils, markers, and any other materials students will need so that they won’t need to go back and forth to their desks.
If your center has different activity sheets students need access to, there are a few ways you could store them. One way would be to create a large binder with plastic inserts. Fill each insert with multiple copies of each activity. If you have the space, stackable trays are also a great option. Place a sticky note on the last copy telling students to let you know that more copies need to be made of that activity.
Whichever way you choose to organize your materials, make sure that they are clearly labeled and easy to find. This will save you a lot of time when setting up and cleaning up your centers. A great procedure to have would be the last group to sit at the center is responsible for cleaning up and organizing the materials in preparation for the next day.
Managing a Year-Round Center
The whole point of creating year-round centers is to make them as hands-off as possible. Therefore you will want to have systems in place so that managing the center doesn’t take up loads of time.
Again, if you are blessed and fortunate enough to have extra hands, this is a wonderful way to use them. Your volunteer can sharpten pencils, replace dried out markers, make sure there are enough copies, replenish notebook paper/sticky notes/index cards as needed, etc. If you are not in the position of having volunteers, recruit your students! This would be a great classroom job, one that reinforces ownership and responsibilty regarding classroom materials.
Another thing to consider is collecting work from the center. Will students turn in their work daily? Weekly? Would you like everything contained in a notebook/binder? Where should they leave their assignments and how will they be returned? These are all questions to consider BEFORE having students start using the center.
Assigning Students to Centers
Another thing to consider when creating year round centers is how you will assign students. You might choose to have students rotate in groups to different centers around the room, or let students choose when they will visit each center. If you want to allow for student choice, it is important to set ground rules before they visit the center for the first time. For example:
- How many students can work at the center at one time
- How many activities students should complete at one time (for example, if they need to complete 4 activities per week, can they do all 4 at once, or would you prefer them to do one at a time?)
- What voice level students should use at the center
Keeping Students Engaged Year Round
There are a few factors to consider in regards to keeping your students on task and engaged at the same center all year long. One thing to think about is how challenging the activities are. You need to hit that “just right’ spot where the activities are challenging enough to keep students busy, but accessible enough to be completed independently. Throughout the year, you may need to reassess the content in your center to make sure it is not too easy/hard.
Another consideration: variety. Students won’t be jumping for joy to head to centers if they are doing the same activities week after week. A menu or choice board system is the perfect way to keep students engaged year-round. Whether you start out with all the activities available or gradually introduce new activities throughout the year, the element of choice is sure to be met with enthusiasm.
Ready to Try a Year-Round Center?
I have had great success with using my Spelling Choice Board as a year-round center. With 27 low-prep multisensory spelling activities, this resource is a perfect way for students to practice their spelling words:
To grab a sneak peek at all 27 activities included in the Spelling Choice Board, you can download the FREE spelling task cards here:
In addition, as a special perk for my email subscribers, I am giving you the opportunity to try out five of the activities inside of the Spelling Choice Board for FREE. Just add your information below to grab the free activities!
Are you excited to try out a year round center? Let me know in the comments!
Happy Teaching,
Marianna