Content Area Centers

For those of you who have been teaching primary grades, centers are not new for you. But what having students visit different areas in the room, to engage in a variety of actives was part of our social studies and science instruction? What if instead of cracking open social studies textbooks or jumping into science experiments from our FOSS or EIE kits, we had a day or two set aside for centers? K-8 teachers, I want to challenge you to think about some of these compelling reasons to engage in this type of teaching for the purpose of increasing your student's learning. 

Centers are;

* An opportunity for students to engage with content in a variety of the ways, many "access points" 

* Requires deep thinking about content, rather than "sit and get"

* Students learn from conversation with one another, defending opinions, justifying thinking  with text evidence 

* Allows for differentiation in task, support, and thinking

* Great chance to generate and answer "big questions"

* Lends to  thoughtful CCSS connections

* Builds independence and ownership of learning

Here are some ideas for centers that could become part of your instruction regardless of the center;

Statistics Center- looking at graphic or numerical representations of the content, consider infographics

Photograph Center- photos from textbooks, articles, internet. Diagrams and drawings that represent scientific content

Listening center- audio of speeches or video clips related to content

Write around center- photo, statistics, poem or passage in the middle, students respond by writing around, and the respond to one another by writing around each other's comments

Text to text- two texts on the topic/content that students read and compare/contrast. Two article with opposing viewpoints, two primary source documents from the same time 

Of course students need to know what your expectations are for the centers, and that does take time. Once students know what the expectations are for the photograph center however it doesn't matter if the photos are of the civil rights movement, science content, or even a math diagram, they know what to do. 

Planning centers that span over several days, within the context of your collaborative team can greatly enrich student learning! 

Let me know if this is something your team would like to work on :)