Center Rotation Ideas for Every Classroom

As we know, center rotations are a VERY big part of learning.  Not only does it allow the students to work on multiple skills in a short amount of time, it also helps teach independence.

My first year teaching, I was almost in tears trying to decide how centers would run in my classroom, and what would the centers focus on. I am lucky enough to work in a school that allows you to decide how you want centers to run. However, talking with my teammates made it difficult to decide how I wanted them to be run, due to everyone doing something different.

After several days, I knew that I needed the center rotations to be structured and timed. I decided that each center rotation would be approximately 15 minutes, and the students would work on skills suggested by Daily 5. My centers would focus on read to self, read with a partner, listen to a story, word work, and skills. (I do not go exactly by Daily 5, but use some of their concepts.)

Before I go into the centers that I use in my classroom, I want to discuss how I pull small groups. My mentor teacher suggested that I leave out "Meet with the teacher" for a center rotation. She said, that by doing this, I would be able to pull different groups daily, based off what they need to work on. One day, I would pull a groups for concept of print, and another day, I would pull groups for reading skills. I love being able to create new small groups each week to focus on what the students need to learn.

Below are the different centers that I use in rotations and a few ideas you can use for each.

Centers in Mrs. Peay's Class

Poster from Sister Teachers East Coast on TPT

• Word Work
• Words Their Way: Focuses on individual student skills; for example, one student may be working on recognizing sounds, where another student is working on the word family -at. 
• Read to Self/Listen
• Find a leveled book to read
• Retell a story
• Read the pictures
• RazKids (great app for listening and reading stories)
• Writing 



Reading Bungalow on TPT

• Sight word work
• string a sight word (can be done with pipe cleaners and letter beads)
• write sight word on white board
• roll a sight word
• student calls out sight word, and group writes the word
• Play-Doh sight word
• Writing a sentence with the sight word for the day
• Skills
• The skills center will be discussed in detail in an upcoming blog. Be on the lookout!

Last year, the students were only able to do 3 center rotations a day. They were required to read to self for one center rotation each day. For the remainder of the centers, they would do them twice a week, and Friday would be make-up day for the students who had not completed their work. Below is a picture of how I had my center displayed for the students. 

If you need any help with setting up your centers, I would love to help and share ideas! Good luck with setting up your centers! 

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