Centers

Now that you've seen the breakdown of our Fairview rotations, let's go a little bit more in depth on each part. I'm going to start with centers. I'm not going to lie, this is the most time consuming part of Fairview for me.(The rest of the rotations take little to no prep.) I'm working with 13 students in grades Kinder to 6th. That is a whole lot of differentiating for a lot of students. It takes time, but it's well worth it. It keeps the students busy when they are not working 1:1 with an adult at the other rotations.

 

Centers are meant to be independent activities which review and practice previously learned skills. Don't get me wrong, they are all not independent. This is especially true when working with the younger students that are not able to function independently yet. We have a signing instructional assistant that works with the students when they are in centers. She helps the students that need additional help and signs off on the activities when they are complete.

 

The centers are stored in Ziploc bags or large, laminated manila envelopes. Each center is labeled with the name of the task. They are leveled in boxes 1-6 and baskets 7-8. The baskets hold over sized items that will not fit in the Ziploc bags.

 

I have tried to group some of the students together for the center tasks to make my life easier. I have four groups: 1.) Students that are still working on learning the alphabet 2.) Preprimer sight word learners 3.) Basic sight word readers (Primer-1st) 4.) 2nd-3rd grade readers working on grammar skills and sentence building.

 

This year I have purchased a lot of my center activities from Teachers Pay Teachers. They also have a TON of free resources that you can download and print. Since this is the first year of structuring centers this way, I didn't have very many resources already created. We do a lot of printing, cutting and laminating. Next year I will have boxes and boxes of seasonal educational centers ready to use.

 

I make my list of students and center tasks. Each student has at least 5-6 centers to complete in that given week. Some of my students are mainstreamed for part of the Fairview time, so they only have 3 centers. I put the activities into the boxes, and fill out their Fairview Centers slip. This pink slip is what the students refer to all week in order to know which activities they have been assigned to complete. When they finish the task, the IA checks it over and initials the box on the slip. The student also removes that number card from the Fairview Center board and puts it into the "Finished activities" box on the right.

 

I created this chart in Word and then took the file to Office Depot to have it printed on poster size, and laminated. After the school year started, we decided to include the kinders, and I got a new student, so I had to add another chart to the bottom. (My type A personality doesn't love that it hangs over the board!) I added velcro to the large chart and printed cards with the centers numbers and also added velcro once they were laminated. 

 

 

I refer to the student's pink slips and put up the matching center numbers onto the board. The board helps the students and staff stay on track. It's an easy, visual way to see who has done what.  At about October I was frustrated every week when I changed the centers that I had to search through these tiny cards for the center numbers I needed. I quickly threw together this little box with cardstock numbered dividers. Now it's easy to find the cards I need quickly.

 

The students store all of their completed center activities in their Fairview box (blue Lakeshore boxes). Also in the Fairview box they have their Fairview binder, schedule, pink centers slip, Guided Reading books, and Adapted Dolch word signing dictionaries. They store everything in here so the papers do not get lost in the desk and everything is in one place.  By the end of the week, the boxes are pretty crazy. You can tell there was a lot of hard work going on!

 

On Friday afternoons I go through each of the Fairview boxes and staple all of the centers work together. This work is sent home in their Friday folders. And then I do it all again for the next week!