Helpful Guide to Efficiently Planning Reading Centers
Reading centers with my 2nd grade students is my favorite subject I have ever taught! Planning reading centers can seem overwhelming and time consuming. I am going to help you break it down into manageable steps! There is a lot of upfront work to create and teach your students how to participate in reading centers. Then after that, they practically run themselves. Let’s jump into the behind the scenes work of planning reading centers!
Making Student Groups
- Decide how many groups you will have during your reading centers. I do 4 groups so that I have 5-6 students in each group.
- Separate students into groups by reading level, grouping alike levels together.
- Consider the decoding and comprehension ability of your students. If there are a lot of students on the same reading level, arrange them by their needs in decoding vs. comprehension.
- Look at behaviors and comfort of the students in the group with each other. Are there any students you know cannot work in a group together? (Remember at some centers, they will work together without you!) Can one benefit from being challenged and moved up a group? Guided reading with the teacher is a time for students to be really vulnerable and take chances. We want to ensure that everyone is comfortable.
- Check that the groups are close to even numbers. If anything, I have my higher level reading groups be a little larger.
Planning Reading Centers Schedule
When planning reading centers schedule, plan the teacher station first. That is the most important to ensure students go to at a certain frequency. Download my freebie below to get started now! Click the picture below or the button to download. The template I am sharing with you has an option that I already put in the teacher stations. The two lower reading level groups see the teacher 3 times a week, the two higher reading level groups see the teacher 2 times a week.
I do 2 centers a day for 15 minutes each. Read more about my schedule and specific literacy centers.
Tips:
- If you are doing Buddy Reading, plan only one group doing that at a time or it gets toooo loud. Trust me from experience!
- I do a center called Focus Frog. This is my worksheet/ assessment opportunity to see if students understand the focus skill of the week. Make sure this is schedule after a few days of instruction. I aim to start these centers on Wednesday.
- Consider behavior on specific days. For example, I had a student one year that always struggled on Mondays. He was most successful if that was his tablet day. So I made sure that his group had tablets on Mondays- easy fix but prevented a lot of behavior problems.
- Each of my groups gets technology once a week for both stations. I do this because the time it took them to log onto the tablet, get onto the website, and get started (even longer with technical issues) really takes a lot out of their time to complete the activity. Having the tablet for 30 minutes straight rather than 15 minutes at a time maximized on their engagement and learning.
- This also means that Monday- Thursday are the days students are assigned to tablets. Friday is a make up day for anyone who missed their day, unless they are at the teacher station. I do this to prevent students from getting upset if they are sick or pulled out of the room during their tablet time.
Batch Planning
This is my favorite hack for planning reading centers!! Also every subject really! When I sit down to plan I plan out a whole unit at once which is 6 weeks for me. I decide on the mentor texts for shared reading, focus skill for each week, focus for each guided reading group, and the center activities for all 6 weeks. Then the best part comes… during 1 PLANNING PERIOD- I make the copies for ALL of it.
There are not many papers and copies needed for my centers that is why this is not so difficult!
For my Seek and Find center, which focuses on sight words, I use these multi- modality activities. I pick the word for the week and then make the copies of the two levels for my students. I use the lower readability for my below grade level students and the higher readability for my on or above grade level readers.
For my Focus Frog center, I either use passages or photograph task cards with graphic organizers. These are from my Comprehension Crew packs. Those align to the reading comprehension focus skill of the week. Since that is preplanned I can have those literacy worksheet copies ready in advance.
The partner plays that I use for Buddy Reading, I prep them all for months at a time and just rotate the play each week. The first year this was a lot of work while watching Netflix at home, but now I can use it year after year!
Do you want more reading center ideas and freebies sent to you?
Guided Reading Materials Prepped
To reduce extra work when planning reading centers, I keep some basic materials at my teacher table to use over and over with every book.
These include:
- white boards and markers
- A,B,C,D pinch cards
- Yes/ No, Agree/ Disagree pinch cards
- laminated flip books to use with dry erase markers
Make Up Work Plan
A big part of planning reading centers is making the plan for what students need to make up if they are absent, at the nurse, or out of the room for any reason. In my room, the Focus Frog station is the most important one that needs to be completed each week. This is because that shows me their understanding in our focus skill. This is the literacy station students need to make up.
Brainstorm more reading center routines and procedures with my free question list here.
I hope that these tips help you to get started planning reading centers for your students today! Check out my other blog posts about planning different parts of reading centers and reach out to me with any questions!
