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DIFFERENTIATED LITERACY

CENTERS IN ACTION

Presented by Margo Southall

margosouthall@nexicom.netwww.margosouthall.com

What Are Differentiated Literacy Centers?

Differentiated Literacy Centers contain reading and writing activities that directly support whole-class and small-group instruction. Each center offers multilevel literacy activities that are assigned to individuals and groups of students based on their demonstrated (data-based) need in order to strengthen specific skills and strategies. Differentiated center tasks also take into account student interests and the level of support students require to complete their literacy assignments

What’s Different About Differentiated Literacy Centers?Traditional Literacy Centers Differentiated Literacy Centers

Activities are based on whole-class instruction

Differentiated resources are not available

Students may become bored or frustrated

Individual levels of support are not part of the center design

One level of response format is provided for each activity

Students may select activities that are outside their instructional zone

Activities are based on student assessment data

Students work with multilevel resources Students are engaged in their learning Levels of support based on student need

are incorporated into the design of each center

Tiered activities include varied responses for each skill or strategy

Students follow a simple coding system to select activities within their instructional zone

Designing Differentiated Literacy Center Tasks

Multi-level center activities are designed with three levels of challenge. Tiered assignments - beginner, intermediate and advanced are provided at each center and are essentially multi-level versions of the same task. By using tiered center activities, teachers enable students with different learning needs to apply the same key skills and strategies, but at varying levels of complexity and open-endedness.It is important to note that these multilevel activities are organized around a common core of essential literacy skills and strategies. To address grade level standards and the need for all students to participate equally in learning opportunities, DLCs allow all students to work on the same standard, yet respond to different prompts and use texts at appropriate reading levels. For example, three students working at the Comprehension center may all work on a summarizing activity, yet each one will be reading a different leveled text and completing a cued prompt at the beginner, intermediate or advanced level

3 Steps to Implementing Differentiated Centers:

1. Identify the appropriate level of challenge for your students based on assessment data2. Select the appropriate center activities that directly support the skills and strategies

students most need to practice and extend3. Plan center activities for groups of students working at the same level of challenge and on

the same skills at the centers

Rotating Groups of Students

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Options:

1. Follow-Up to Small Group Instruction: A Fourth CenterA Reading Group Work center where students complete their work together or at their desks and/or a Technology Center may be included in the rotation. The tasks will need to reflect the same time period as the other centers (20-25 minutes)

2. Rotate Twice Through the Same ActivitiesYou may rotate students twice through the same centers to allow them to finish incomplete work. Students who have completed their tasks will select an activity from the Choices Menu

3. Choices MenuA set of ‘choice menu’ activities allows students to leave their center when they are finished all the required tasks and select a new literacy-building activity. The menu can be displayed on the rotation board or a separate chart. Activities may be based on current classroom themes, topics or author studies and should be open-ended to accommodate the range of learners in your class. For example, students may: check out a book to read from the classroom library, read one of their independent level books from their book box, complete an activity related to a science or social studies theme or to an author study, free-write in their journal, or choose from commercially produced brain-based learning or literacy games

Organizing and Displaying Multi-Level Center Materials

Location: Clusters of desks or a table become a center with a portable sign or table matColor Code System: To manage the differentiated materials necessary for the multilevel activities, color code the folders and bins containing the response forms and activities. For example, beginner level materials are stored in a green folder, intermediate in a yellow folder, advanced in red; and multilevel activities (which are open-ended and appropriate for all levels) stored in a blue folder. With this system, students know which activity to complete. A balance of close-ended and open-ended activities is important for student motivationProject Boards, Bulletin Boards, Magazine Holders & Bins: Reduce photocopying by preparing task cards. Display with Velcro on a project board for quick changes. Storing & Recording Options: Students may record their work in one centers spiral notebook or separate Reading Response and Word Study notebooks. The notebooks, tracking sheet and any photocopies are stored in a two/four pocket folder (see labels)

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Comprehension Word Study Fluency

Team 1 Team 2 Team 3

Choices Menu

Literacy Kits

Theme Book Box

Center Tracking Form

Name: _________________________ Date: _______ Grading Date: ______

Center Activity

Comprehension Do ___________________________center jobs

1. ____________________ 2. ___________________

3. ____________________ 4. ___________________

Fluency Do ___________________________center jobs

1. ____________________ 2. ___________________

3. ____________________ 4. ___________________

Word StudyDo ___________________________center jobs

1. ____________________ 2. ____________________

3. ____________________ 4. ___________________

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√ Each activity you complete √ The finished column when you complete a center☺Keep all your work in your folder

Center 4-Pocket Folder Labels

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My Menu

I need to finish

I need to fix

I am finished

Differentiated Learning at the Comprehension Center

Activities are organized into strategy-based areas:1. Making Connections and Self-Monitoring2. Generating and Answering Questions3. Retelling and Summarizing4. Evaluating and Determining Importance

The focus of your center activities will be based on your current comprehension instruction and student assessment data

At the Comprehension Center, students♦ select reading material labeled at their independent reading level (95-100% accuracy).♦ locate the supporting reading response they are to complete.♦ read the text.♦ write, label and/or draw the responses they made to the reading material. This may be

completed during or after the reading.

Teaching Tips for the Comprehension Center

Model and Allow Time for Student Practice: Model the thinking process required of the comprehension strategies with a ‘Think Aloud’ at stopping points during Shared and Guided Reading. Show students how to complete the reproducible forms or respond to the prompt with a copy on the overhead or enlarged version on chart paper. Have students practice in response to a class read aloud and monitor for understanding. Display the comprehension strategy charts and other graphic organizers that you have created together as a class in response to ongoing reading experiences for students to use as a reference.

Share Student Work: Use student examples from the center and invite student sharing. Compare the different connections and questions students generated to the same stories or topic. Discuss how our different experiences result in a variety of connections and questions. How did our connections or questions help us to understand the story … the character … the information … help us grow as readers?

Multilevel ‘Take-Out Tubs’ Place collections in bins or tubs with an icon that depicts the topic, theme or author.

Correlate to your instruction and student interests. Titles could be grouped by common characters, or the type of character, such as characters who are children, heroes, villains, mice or wolves. Books by multiple authors can be grouped together in tubs by a common characteristic, such as ‘authors who use animals as characters’, ‘authors that write funny books’, or ‘authors that write about friendship’. Provide a selection of multilevel texts within each collection of tubs, including easy chapter books. Schedule a few moments each week for brief ‘book talks’ so that students can recommend titles

Tub Buddies: Students meet at the tub to read and discuss a title, author series they enjoy or topic they are interested in researching (study buddies). The Tub Buddies become the resident experts and share their findings with the class or their ‘sharing

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group’. Use Tic Tac Toe Boards, cube formats and question cards, with ‘Tub Buddies’ taking turns or collaboratively responding to the prompts

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Tic Tac Question

Choose 3 questions starters across, down or diagonally. Think of a question that begins with these words.

Why do you think?

What might happen if?

What would you do?

Were they right?

What is your

opinion?

Should?

Why does? How could? How?

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Coding Bookmark

I already knew this

I wonder

I learned

I liked this part

C This did not make sense

Aha! Now I get it!

Coding Bookmark

I already knew this

I wonder

I learned

I liked this part

C This did not make sense

Aha! Now I get it!

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Fluency Center Activities

The Fluency Center activities incorporate four areas of fluency training:1. Fluency with Words2. Fluency with Phases3. Fluency with Connected Text4. Technology-Assisted Reading

*Most of the fluency activities are multilevel. All students follow the same procedures but use easy level, often familiar, texts appropriate for fluency training (98-100% accuracy)

At the Fluency Center, studentso Locate the materials for the task (word cards, phrases, familiar reading material or

passages labeled with their reading level) o Participate in the independent, partner or group activity following the modeled routineso Practice reading with accuracy and expression at a pace that ‘sounds like talking’

1. Fluency with Words

Word Wildcat: Students use a masking card or tracking aid that enables them to focus on one word at a time. Prepare word cards on an O-ring or lists of words presented in 2 or 3 columns containing target spelling patterns appropriate for different groups of students. A digital timer is used with students comparing how long it takes them to read the words over several readings (can be a partner activity). Resources to support this are: www.flashcardexchange.com (Fry’s sight words); www.oxtonhouse.com (vowel patterns)

2. Fluency with High Frequency Word Phrases

Teaching Tips: Model identifying high frequency phrases in familiar text using a pointer or highlighter tape in a big book or chart story. Print these on a white board or overhead transparency and model fluent reading of the phrases in isolation during whole class shared reading. Combine previously taught high frequency words with the new ones you are currently teaching to create phrases of two to four words

are they all they are all will they all they will all

♦ Phrase Slide: Prepare strips of 10-12 sight word phrases according to three levels of challenge. Use a shape, such as a frog and cut out a slit where the phrase strip can be inserted. Students pull the strip through, reading one phrase at a time (see Froggy Phrase Slide in Differentiated Literacy Centers, Scholastic, 2007)

♦ Phrase Sort: Phrases tell us important information about characters, places, events, actions or facts as well as how something is done or someone is feeling. Have students sort the phrases under header cards for Who, What, Where and When. Example:

Who What Where Whena good boy think about it it goes there yesterday morningfriend of the buy a present next to the house all day long

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♦ Possible Sentences: Students use the phrases to generate possible sentences. They complete the phrases provided with an oral or written sentence. You may also provide phrases that make a complete sentence when combined together.

Resources: ♦ Fry’s 300 ‘’instant’’ words in The Fluent Reader by Timothy Rasinski (Scholastic, 2003)♦ Sight Word Phrases www.crystalsprings.com♦ http://classroom.leanderisd.org/webs/elemla/powerpoints.com (powerpoint)♦ Websites for Dolch words in phrases include: www.createdbyteachers.com;

www.schoolbell.com

3. Fluency with Connected Text

♦ Punctuation Cards: Provide cards with enlarged punctuation marks in a baggie at the center or display on the sides of a cube (Kleenex box). Print unpunctuated familiar text, such as sentences from class shared reading on sentence strips or index cards. Students read the same sentence using different punctuation prompts to guide their expression

♦ Emotion Cards: Provide cards with faces that represent a range of emotions, such as sad, happy, scared, excited, angry and robot-like (no emotion). Students practice reading the same character line with different emotion cue cards

♦ Comics and Riddles: Paste comic strips on card stock for students to read with appropriate expression (and inference)

♦ Partner Reading: Students follow the steps in the partner reading chart, first deciding how they will read: together, take turns, echo read; listen to your partner, help you partner with tricky words if they ask you, share the ideas about what you read

♦ Tic Tac Poems: (see reproducible)

Resources:Phonics Through Poetry by Babs Bell Hajdusiewicz (K-1), Good Year Books, 2004More Phonics Through Poetry by Babs Bell Hajdusiewicz (2-3), Good Year Books, 2004Phonics Poetry: Teaching Word Families by Rasinski & Zimmerman, Allyn & Bacon, 200070 Wonderful Word Family Poems by Jennifer Wilen and Beth Handa, Scholastic, 2002Antarctic Antics: A Book of Penguin Poems by Judy Sierra, Voyager Books, 2003 The New Adventures of Mother Goose by Bruce Lansky, Meadowbrook Press, 1993 Scranimals by Jack Prelutsky, Greenwillow, 2002 (multisyllabic nonsense words)Perfect Poems for Teaching Sight Words by Deborah A. Ellermeyer and Judith Rowell, Scholastic, 2005Benchmark Education multilevel readers’ theatre scripts www.benchmarkeducation.com

4. Fluency with Technology

♦ Tape-Assisted Reading: Read Along with Interactive Features: www.nrsi.com; www.readnaturally.com (slower paced reading, increasing 10 wpm over 3-4 successive readings for Beginner level)

♦ Tell-a-Tape: Students practice reading a page/paragraph with expression; record themselves read; listen to their reading and note the improvement they have made

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♦ Computer Assisted Reading - Online Resources: Read Aloud: www.storylineonline.net (faster paced for intermediate and advanced levels); www.icdlbooks.org (820 books online in digital text in 9 languages); Student Interest Site: www.storiesfromtheweb.com (read stories written by students)

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Word Study Center

The Word Study Center activities focus on four areas of word study:1. Letter-Sound Relationships2. Vowel Patterns (rimes or word families) 3. High Frequency Words4. Structural Analysis: Using Word Parts

At the Word Study Center, students Locate the appropriate word cards and/or manipulatives for the task Participate in the independent, partner or group activity following the modeled routines Practice identifying familiar phonics and spelling elements and applying to new words Use multisensory formats to increase their recognition of high frequency words

1. Letter-Sound Relationships

♦ ABC Games: Flip Up (concentration), Roll and Stack (letters on cube, match to picture), Pick Up (sticks with initial consonants, blends, digraphs - students use to generate words)

2. Vowel Patterns

♦ Magic Mat: Provide a word building mat with a space to keep manipulatives and space below for building words; provide word cards at the center and have students generate more with the same pattern

♦ Word Play Books: Books that focus on word play provide a springboard at the center

♦ Wrapper Rimes: Print the target rimes on index cards. Paste labels and wrappers onto cardstock. Store with the rime cards in baggies. Students find familiar rimes in the food word or brand name. Students draw the wrapper. Next, they write the name of the wrapper and highlight or underline the rime it contains. Tips: List the rimes you are studying in your newsletters to parents and caregivers, and request students bring in labels and wrappers for the center. Cut highlighter tape into 2-3” pieces and display along the edge of a strip of laminated cardstock. Students use it to highlight a word, record the word and return it to the holder

♦ Word Sorts: Select words for category headings or use the rime or vowel pattern as a heading. Write them in the boxes at the top of a (Microsoft Word table format) form. Underline them e.g. ame or name. Write the words with 2 or more rimes in random order in the boxes on the form. Photocopy and store in a file folder labeled by level of challenge and numbered in sequence of instruction for easy storage and retrieval e.g. Green #3 - _ap, at; Yellow #3 _ame, ake; red #3 _oi, oy. Alternatively, copy onto cardstock and cut apart the word cards. Store in a labeled baggie. Provide a Sorting Mat (2 or 3 columns ruled on a open file folder). Students cut out the category headers (underlined) and put across the top of the Sorting Mat, and then the word boxes, sorting the words under each category heading on the mat. Recording:

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Beginning level students will write and illustrate one or two words for each pattern. Intermediate and Advanced students write the words in columns in their notebooks. They also write a sentence stating what each category has in common. For example: “All of these words have the _ame rime”; “All of these words have the _ake rime”. Provide a card with a sentence starter at the center for students to use as a reference when writing this reflective statement. Students may brainstorm and list more words with the same pattern and add these to the columns. Extensions: Word sorts can be made more challenging by asking students to sort them by categories such as parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective), words that sound the same yet have different spellings, as in been and bean, teach and speech, and words that can be pronounced more than one way or homophones e.g. wind and live

♦ What’s the Same? Students identify what the word cards have in common (sound, spelling or meaning). Two word cards can be compared with a Venn diagram

♦ Big Word Puzzles: Print multisyllabic words containing target rimes on index cards. Cut apart into onsets and rimes and display at the center. Store three-four cut-up words in a baggie for students to reconstruct. The number in each bag will depend on the level of challenge for these students. You may also provide a card with the words on for self-checking in the baggie along with the word parts. For example:

3. High Frequency Words♦ Mix and Fix: Provide a mat, manipulatives and word cards in a baggie. Students build,

mix up and rebuild the word three times, then record it in their notebooks♦ Word Windows: Cut four rectangular windows down the front of a file folder. Attach a

word card to the top with a Velcro dot or paper clamp. Students place a piece of paper inside the folder and copy the word through the folder windows with gel pens or markers

♦ Rebus Sentences: Students use both picture cards and sight words to build sentences♦ Sorts: B- same/different initial/final letters, number of letters; I – single consonant vs.

blend/digraphs, same/different medial vowels, patterns; A – Yes/No - silent vowels/consonants, spelling 1/spelling 2 (same sound)

4. Structural Analysis♦ Compound Flip Up: Provide compound word cards for students to match and build ♦ Prefixes and Suffixes: Students use prefix, suffix and base words to build new words. A

flip book can be created with a three ring binder and index cards

Resources:Environmental print website: www.hubbardscupboard.orgPicture This! Picture Sorting for Alphabetics, Phonemes and Phonics by S. Nielsen-Dunn (Teaching Resource Centre, www.trcabc.com)All Sorts of Sorts (grades K-4) and All Sorts of Sorts 2 (grades 3-8) www.trcabc.com Word Journeys by Kathy Ganske, 2000 (sorting activities and word lists)Word Sorts and More: Sound, Pattern and Meaning Explorations (K-3) by Kathy Ganske Word Sorts for Within Word Pattern Spellers by Johnston, Bear, Invernizzi & TempletonWebsites: www.starfall.com (online activities); www.rhymezone.com; wordplay.com

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est im ate estimate

Reading Skills Card Games: Sight Words by Liane B. Onish, 2004 (Scholastic)Sight Word Manipulatives for Reading Success by Deborah Schecter, 2005, (Scholastic)

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