Featured Center of the Week

We spend a big chunk of our day doing our Fairview Rotations. Fairview Learning is specially designed reading/language activities for Deaf/Hard of Hearing students. One of those rotations is centers. My language arts centers are meaningful activities that the students should be able to do independently while I am working one to one with a student on Guided Reading. Since I love seeing simple, low-prep centers that other teachers are using, I thought it might be fun to feature a center a week here on the blog.

I am in the process of re-vamping my centers binder. The recording pages are waaaaaaaaay out of date, ugly and boring. Here's a little proof. It's kind of embarrassing to even show you. The top is my old centers binder. The bottom is my new, in progress, centers binder. I was able to update 13 of my centers this weekend, so that was a productive weekend

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Since I have kinder through 6th grade in my class during rotations, I have to have a wide variety of centers to use. Most of the centers use simple Dollar Tree finds, or basic supplies that most teachers already own.

This week's feature: Gumball Words. Students press on the gumball dispenser and a "gumball" or two falls out. They read their word (or in our case, they sign all three ways to sign "do"), then they record their word on a gumball on their recording sheet. At then end of the activity, they read all their words to an adult before the center can be signed off.

I found the little gumball dispenser at Dollar Tree. I filled it with little flat glass marbles that I found at Micheal's. I typed up the Adapted Dolch sight word list on sticker paper. I punched them out with a little circle punch, and adhered them to the bottom of the marble. So far, they seem to be sticking really well. I have a set for each list, pre-primer through third grade.