Center and Small Group Management

Last year I wanted to work on Managing classroom centers. I bought the book The Daily Five by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser. This book teaches you how to use five centers throughout the day and has the children choose the centers they go to themselves.

The centers are:

• Read to Self
• Read to Someone
• Word Work
• Writing
• Listen to Reading

These authors also have a website http://www.thedailycafe.com/

I found this strategy to be very useful. I had a difficult time managing the time for each 

center so instead of 5 centers I had 4. 

• Read to Self (AR)
• Listen to reading and Read to Someone (Buddy Reading)
• Word Work and Writing
• Teacher center

That way the center was  about 15 minutes each. The authors also recommend letting the kids choose their center rotation. I also liked this idea but found that it became too time consuming to have them choose. So I 

made it a reward. If by Friday we had worked hard on completing our centers, then I Friday they could choose where they wanted to start and the rotation they wanted to do.  The kids have said they really liked being able to choose. 

For the upcoming school year, I want to try to implement the Daily 5 a little bit more intensely. I am thinking of hading out a Center Contract each week. The centers would be the Daily 5. This way, the kids could choose where they begin and learn to monitor their own work and progress. 

Small group instruction would be a little different with this model. I am planning on creating a system where the kids are given a group color or name. this grouping would be based on their needs during the unit of study. Throughout the center time, I will call out a color or group name and the students who were in that group for the unit will come and work with me on a skill the group was needing help with. Even if they are not finished with their center they would stop working and come to the teacher table. When we finish our small group lesson, they would return to the center they had been working on. 

Let me know your thoughts on small group and center instruction

Jenny

Here are some resources to help: