Halloween Literacy Centers

Do you ever feel like you had to keep adjusting the way you do things to fit the needs of your class from year to year?  Earlier, I posted about my literacy centers and writing time - splitting the kids in half so some were writing and some were working at literacy centers. Well, that didn't work for this group of kiddos.  I have a pretty rowdy bunch with some pretty significant behaviors.  I also didn't feel like I was getting in a good writing lesson plus share time for the kiddos.  So, I went back to the old model of 4 rotating centers (4 because my Mondays are wacky and it worked out better to have 4!)  Well, the groups got too big, and kids were not working well together.  So, I came up with the buddy system.  The kids got to choose their own partners and they work with these partners during both math and literacy center time.  (They are also their journal share partners).  Since the kids are working in partners, I need to have more than 4 centers.  So, they are now rotating through 8 centers for 2 weeks. (There are also two groups of 3 - I made sure that these groups included the kiddos that get extra intervention support, so they are not always their for the full literacy and/or math center time).

Here are the literacy centers for this week:

 Listening Center:  We are reading books about monsters this week, so the kids are listening to The Great Monster Hunt.  On their response sheet they will draw a picture of what they thought the monster looked like and what it actually did look like.  This is a really cute book!

 Sight word haunted house: The windows on the house open and close, the kids look behind the windows and read and write the sight word they see.

 Letter/Sound Sort:  This idea came from Deanna Jump.  The children cut apart the pictures and sort them according to their beginning sound.  This will be a center that will stay the same.  The kids can try to label their pictures when they are done.

 Spider Rhymes:  The children find the matching pictures that rhyme.  I gave them a little extra support with this one by using matching scrapbook paper for the rhymes.  If they have trouble finding the rhymes, they could look at the paper.  When they find the match, they write the words on their response sheet. (I made labels with the words and stuck them on the back).

 Sight Word Roll a Word: No explanation needed :)  This one will stay the same too! (Just the words will change!)

 Spooky ABC Shake up- I thought I had a picture of the cute cover - I'll try to remember to post one later.  I got this idea from First Grader...At Last.  She uses numbers and the kids write addition sentences.  I thought this was great for kinders though!

 Pocket Chart: The sight words of the week are like and my, so the children match the colored web to the color word.  They then wrote the word on a matching response sheet (I like my _____ spider web) and colored a spider at the end the same color.

 Poem Reconstruction:  10 Little Pumpkins.  This was the first poem reconstruction that we have done, so I kept it pretty simple.  The kids cut the strips out, and put it in order.  They can either read the number words or look at the number.  I made the pocket chart below to support their learning.