Learning Centers

I created a bulletin board each month that included a calendar and some lists of boring words that could be replaced with more exciting words. The students used these to improve their writing. 

In my mentor teacher's classroom we established literacy stations that we used on a regular basis. These helped to get the students actively involved in the learning process, and they helped the students to gain a better understanding of the material. I would like to encorperate this in my classroom.


Vocab Rock n Roll:

At this station students play a game where they roll dice to practice with their vocabulary words. The students play in partner and one student will roll the di for another student. The second student will then either spell the word, act it out, define it, use it in a sentence, name the part of speech, or name a synonym or antonym.

Vocabulary Matching:

At this station students will work in pairs to play the game "Memory" with their vocabulary words. The students will follow these directions:
      1. Spread out the index cards face down on the desk.
      2. Player one turns over two cards trying to match the vocabulary word with its definition.
      3. If the vocabulary word does not match the definition, player one turns the cards back over (face down). If the cards match, player one keeps the two cards.
      4. Player two takes a turn, following the same directions as player one.
      5. Play continues until all cards are matched. The player with the most cards wins.

King/Queen of Vocab

Students may play this game in partners or in small groups. At this station one student wears a "crown" made of boarder paper on their head and the other player/s will clothes pin a vocabulary word to the crown so that the king/queen cannot see the card. The other students will give clues and the king/queen will have to use these clues to guess which vocabulary word they are.

Vocabulary Four Square:

At this station students will draw a square on thier paper and then divide this square into four parts. In the center of the square the students will write out one of their vocabulary words. Then, in one section the students will define the word, in the second they will use it in a sentence, in the third they will name the part of speech, and in the fourth square they will name a synonym or antonym.