Superhero Activities and Centers

This summer was the first time I have taught ESY in forever.  I knew in January when I decided to teach, that I had to make it fun and engaging for all of us. Historically, the attendance rate has been really low, and I knew my kiddos needed to be there daily. So I decided to go with a Superhero themed classroom and lessons. What do you know, my kids were there pretty much every single day. It's amazing how you can make something exciting and fun and they don't even realize they are learning in the process.

So I started to research and plan for my superheroes in training. Seriously, what did we all do before Pinterest and Teachers Pay Teachers? I couldn't find enough superhero themed centers to last throughout four and half weeks, so I decided to design my own unit. It ended up being a MEGA unit by the time I was done with summer school. I just kept adding to it as a new need came up.

Here are a few highlights from our superhero themed summer school:

We really focused on Language Arts since that is where the majority of my students struggle. The first day of summer school we talked about our classroom expectations. Of course, summer school is not the same as the regular school year, but it was important to be clear about my expectations for them. We also thought about what areas we needed to improve on and made personal goals and superheroes to go with them. I really felt like my students were more accountable for their work when they really focused on accomplishing their goal.

I was fortunate to have my same students that I have during the school year, with the two kinder kiddos added in. We made some getting to know you capes to practice answering questions and writing. I hung these on the backs of their chairs after they decorated and colored their capes. They turned out super cute!

We read two different picture books during summer school. First was Dex, the Heart of  Hero. Oh my goodness! If you have not read this one, go get it! It is very cute! It's about this little wiener dog who dreams of becoming a super hero. He trains and works hard. Then at the end of the book he saves the neighborhood tom cat and truly does become a hero. It was adorable! I found quite a few resources on TpT for this unit. We worked on spelling, vocabulary and writing related to the book. But this little writing craftivity was my favorite. So cute!

The other book we read was written by a 15 year old girl called, How to Be a Super Villain. We talked about the difference between a superhero and a villain.  The boys got a kick about our villains. They were very into it!  After creating our anchor charts, the kids did a comparison activity using flaps, where they wrote or drew about the difference between superheroes and villains. I had Kinder to 6th grade this summer, so I had to differentiate big time. They are all working from the kinder to early forth grade level in reading and writing.

The bulk of our day was spent doing centers. I made a fun superhero power point with the centers that literally exploded when it was time to rotate. The kids loved it and I did as well. It helped us stay on track and kept the time for us. I am thinking about making one for our Fairview Learning time to use during the regular school year.

During the week the students rotated through several different centers. They read with me, sight words (for the younger kids), word work, sentence building, grammar, writing, ASL, iPad, and computers. Within each of the centers I had to differentiate for their levels. That's why I ended up with such a huge centers unit.

It was so nice to have all of my centers created and ready to go for each week. It meant I was able to walk out the door each day feeling like I could focus on spending time with my own children at home. Such a concept, right?

The students were encouraged to come to summer school each day. At the end of the week, if they completed at least six of the centers they got a little treat on Friday afternoon. That was a big deal to them. Whatever works, right?

But naturally, the iPad center was their favorite. Before summer school I explored quite a few apps and made some tutorials on how to make comic strips to go along with our superhero theme. The kids took pictures on the iPad of them in superhero poses, then they completed the tutorial. They added a cape and mask as well as fun words like Pow! Zap! etc. They really enjoyed this for sure! I need to make more tutorials using new apps for the regular school year. It gives the iPad center a sense of purpose and incorporates following directions all in one. 

At the end of our four and a half weeks, we had a fun superhero party on the last day of school. I bought some fabric and taught the kiddos how to sew a basic bag on the sewing machine. They used their bags to take everything home with them.

I set up a fun laser maze in our library area. They got a kick out of this for sure! It was pretty easy to create. I hung a few pieces of really long red yarn from the ceiling and then strung it back and forth at different levels. We watched Megaminds, made superhero masks, colored star picture frames that had a picture of the class, cleaned up the classroom, and then said goodbye until August.

I was pleasantly surprised with how easy and quick summer school actually was. I might just have to do it again next summer!

Check out my Superheroes Mega Center and Activities Unit. It is jammed packed with centers for Kinder to 2nd grade and a ton of activities for your own little superheroes in your classroom!

Center Storage

Do you get motivated to clean and organize in the spring? Well it's time to get your centers organized! Today I am sharing how I organize my seasonal and skill center materials.

Each day my students rotate during our Fairview rotation time. If the students are not working one to one with an adult, they are doing centers. I need to have a wide range of language arts centers from kindergarten to about the third grade level.  Each week I am putting out six centers for four different levels. Here's how I keep them all organized.

Seasonal Centers
Over the years I have accumulated a variety of seasonal centers. They range in skills from sight word write the room activities, ABC order to sentence building. Quite a few of them I have purchased from Amy Lemons. I just love her materials! I have these sorted by months in large Ikea tubs. I simply printed each month on a piece of cardstock to use as a divider. I also store the seasonal center materials at the front of the tub.

At the end of the month I pull down the tub, put away last month's centers and pull out what I can use for this month. I pull out the centers I will use and put them in the cabinet for easy access throughout the month.

These big tubs are stored on top of my storage cabinet.  I have a tub for August-December and then January-June. I organize my seasonal books the same way in these tubs. 

 


Skill Centers
Besides my seasonal centers, I have various language arts skill centers that are sorted in baskets. Years ago I made labels on little dividers to keep them organized. They sit on storage drawers right behind my Guided Reading table.

Due to the fact that I have my students for sometimes six years, I really have to keep adding to these centers all the time. I have started to keep track of when I use the center and with who simply by putting a post-it note on the front of the center envelope or folder with their name and date used.

Lace-a-Word

Today's featured center is Lace-a-Word. I love these little lacing letter beads from Lakeshore Learning. They are perfect for activities like this and combine fine motor skills all in one. Using any word list, the students locate the letters in their word. Lace the beads to spell the word, then write their word. Simple and no prep.

I finally put together some of the centers activities I use in my classroom and created Word Work Centers for Any Word List. 

Link Your Words

Everyone has a million little linky manipulatives in class, right? What are you going to do with them other than use them for math? Use them to link letters together to make words! Students spell their words by linking them together then recording them on the recording sheet.

Sticky Words

Such a simple center. I took my old scrapbook stickers and brought them to the classroom. The kids write their sight words, then use the stickers to spell the words. This is an excellent fine motor task while practicing their sight words. Peeling off stickers is not as simple as it looks. I have several students that can use this fine motor skill practice.

Clip Your Words

I don't know about you, but I have a million clothes pins in the classroom. This Clip Your Words center just takes word cards and clothes pins. I bought a simple set of sight word cards from the Dollar Tree. I simply add word cards by writing them on sentence strips. I wrote the letters on top of the clothes pins with a sharpie marker. It does take a few minutes to go through your previous clothes pins to match up the letters and write a few new ones. It's a simple center that targets reading, spelling and those fine motor skills!

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

.

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.

Guided Reading Book Study

 

I read several teacher blogs that are participating in a book study this summer. I've never done anything like this before, but thought I'd join in since the topic is Guided Reading. I teach Guided Reading to all of our K-6th grade Deaf/Hard of Hearing students during our Fairview Learning rotations, so I feel like there is always room for improvement. (Fairview Learning is a 5 component reading program specifically designed for Deaf/Hard of Hearing students to enhance the regular reading curriculum. Read more about how we use it here.) Plus, I have such a wide range of reading abilities and each child has very different needs. Which means I need to be able to tailor all of my Guided Reading lessons to meet their needs. This book study will help me do just that.


Chapter One was all about preparing for Guided Reading. This is an area that I worked very hard on this past year in establishing a routine and developing lots of center activities to keep the kids busy and engaged when not working with an adult during our Fairview rotations. The students have a schedule they follow throughout the 1.5 hour rotation time. This keeps us on track and keeps everyone from students to staff accountable during our Fairview time. The nice part is that we will have 6 out of 7 students that participated in our rotations last year, so it will be an easy start up in the fall.

Students that are not working one to one with an adult during this time are working on literature centers. We have a signing instructional assistant who supervises and assists the students during their center tasks. I try really hard to create independent centers, but it doesn't always work out. Some students really need a lot of assistance, no matter what the task is. 

Due to the wide range of abilities from K-6th I have to provide a  huge range of centers as well. I try and group students with similar abilities and assign them the same tasks. I record all of their centers onto a brightly colored paper that goes into their Fairview boxes. They refer to this slip throughout the week to complete their own assigned centers.

When they complete a center, the assistant checks their work and then signs off on their sheet. They then remove that number from the wall chart. This is a good visual reminder for the students and for me on who has what to complete for the week. Accountability is always a good thing.


I store all of my centers in Ziploc bags or in laminated envelopes and each is labeled with the name of the task so they can match it up against their centers list. The activities are placed into numbered boxes or baskets to make them easy to find. This is what our centers area looks like. We have a lot going on all at once, so organization is a must.

What I focused on while reading chapter one is ways to improve what I already have in place. First off, I am not using my word wall efficiently.  In fact, I'm pretty sure it was a waste of space last year. There are so many ways to improve my use of the word wall and that is something I've already been on Pinterest and TpT researching. There are so many fun things out there to help students learn and practice new words from the word wall.

The other area, that is currently non-existent is a writing center. Sure, the students go to one to one writing with the other D/HH teacher during our rotations, but I don't have a designated area in the classroom for a writing area/center. The possibilities are endless for the writing center tasks. Right now all of my centers are mobile and they take them back to their desks. I just need to find a space for it and make it a priority.

Up next, Chapter Two- Assessment.

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!