KindergartenWorks: poetry and day three

We are on day 3 and living out procedures, procedures, procedures... Can anyone relate?! I am excited to share about another literacy center that we use as a reminder to myself that we...will...get...there! And this is the follow up to the post...

This center is called our poetry center and features our reading strategies, nursery rhymes and some interactive materials to help connect students to working with print in shorter amounts. This center actually takes up no physical floor space and is all contained on the walls of a corner in my classroom that would otherwise be just a high traffic area.

During literacy centers though, it is transformed into a stand-up work space. It has one large pocket chart and two small ones (like from the dollar spot at Target).

I have used both hanging organizers from Dollar Tree and from a cut up hanging shoe organizer to attach the interactive materials to the wall as well. I've simply done this as a way to define the space where this center takes place. (The picture below is my latest version, they have to be replaced every year or two since they are dollar store quality)

My kinders are developing reading behaviors like scanning, isolating, highlighting all the while practicing some basic skills. They have 4 activities that they can do while at this center.

They can highlight the focus letter using cut up pieces of highlighting strip material (or you could do see through dividers, I guess).

They can work together to match words to the entire poem. In the late winter we mix up the poem strips and they have to place them in order and love mixing them up before the next group comes through. Later in the year I even throw out the challenge to my higher kinders to construct the entire poem just with the word cards and no poem to aid except for checking.

They can frame words and bits of words that they know and love applying their reading strategies and practicing them on each other.

We work up to having three different poems out at any time, always rotating out the oldest poem. But this also means that they have the opportunity to be exposed to a single poem for four weeks. So, I like to maximize on the exposure they get! One week whole class, then the next week it's familiar enough to be released into the center where it lives in the big pocket chart first for a week, and then spends two weeks in a small pocket chart.

They love the familiarity of the poems and I love the reading behaviors that come from this center. Now, I have to tell you, the second and third year I taught this center, I saved it as one of the last centers that I introduced because I thought my kinders would see it as less "fun" when compared to other centers. I've realized my mistake and now teach this as one of the first few centers because they enjoy modeling after what we've done as a whole class and can relatively do it more independently (although they generally just want to read and re-read with pointers as their only choice) sooner than other centers. Speaking of how I introduce centers, I plan out by days how to to launch centers what to introduce, what to review and what to practice. You'll see below I roll out the idea of the poetry center on day 3 of my center introduction schedule.