Using Centers in the Classroom

hey guys welcome back to my channel my name is Elizabeth and I'm a kindergarten teacher here in California and today I want to share with you how I use centers in my classroom I get a lot of questions about the activities that I do in class and I really want to start sharing with you some more ideas on how I engage my students through hands-on learning one way that I do that is by using centers in the classroom but we like to do is just basically rotate from Center to Center I basically have more centers out than I do groups so that when one group is done there's always going to be one or two centers that are still open because there are more centers than there are groups I hope that makes sense so lakeshore learning sent me a bunch of centers and you can kind of see them here they're kind of displayed on the ladder there's actually more down here that I'm going to show you and I introduced them to my students this last month I can't even tell you like how awesome they are because it is the last month of school and things are a little bit crazy you know just busy getting ready for graduation and we're doing a lot of review we're wrapping up a lot of classroom projects that kind of thing and so having basically kind of like a different set of centers has been such a blessing and that's one thing that my team teacher has taught me is to have certain centers that you pull out during only during special times of the year whether it's the end of the year or whether it's like during rainy day recess that kind of thing so that it's like a new fun activity that they haven't seen before they're not bored with it yet so having some centers in the classroom that I can kind of rotate in with my other centers has been such a blessing so I'd like to walk through the center's with you because um lakeshore has done such a great job at creating hands-on engaging learning activities in these centers they're actually called activity centers and so I want to talk you through kind of how I engage my students with these centers there's one Center for example this one right here it's the alphabet locks so the students get a key in a lock and they unlock the locks that I use in a different way I actually use this in as an exit ticket I will use the first Center that kids love it as the center but then there's another way that I use it and so I just kind of walk you through how I use them hopefully give you some ideas on how you could use these centers in your classroom or at home with your students especially as summer approaches if you're looking for some hands-on fun stuff these are what you want so I'm going to show you how my students reacted to them and talked a little bit about how we use them in the classroom are you ready are you ready okay let's jump in okay so the first thing I do before I introduce new centers is I basically go over the roles and expectations with my centers I was able to introduce these new centers to the students and I took a lot of time probably 10 or 15 minutes before we even jumped in to talk about how we treat our centers how we put our centers away how we share our centers I gave the students ask students open-ended questions I also talked with them about okay well if somebody has a key that you want what are some things that you can do so I'm kind of building the vocabulary they're learning how to share they're learning how to work with partners there's so many different there's so many different little lessons that they're learning as they are playing with these centers with their classmates but the most important thing that I would recommend that you do before you start centers in your classroom is to really go over the expectations when the student brings the box back up to you what do you want it to look like and share that with them so I will show you some video right here of how I basically talked with the students and how I expected them to respond to the expectations that I had when they played with you centers well good morning this morning we have a bunch of new centers that this company called Lakeshore Learning and immerse classroom can we say thank you to lakeshore okay so I'm gonna go over how we use the center and then how I expect you to put it back put it away when you're done because we want to take care of these centers right yeah we want to have these for a long time so we need to do a good job when you put them away so I'm going to show you how to do that okay so this first one is I can build simple words now inside here are all these little drawers see how it says what are our balance can you sing are very good okay so inside are all of these cards now on one side there is a picture and there's some letters but it's missing that we exceed a letter is your hip at least somebody tell me what letter is missing from this card yes and very good so I would look in here and look I found to the letter n so when I have it on my table I'm gonna put the letter n right there to finish the work she to tell me if I'm doing this the right way are you sure that's not okay what about this way this is the right way okay one still out so I need to make sure that I put it away all the way cuz if this gets torn off or ripped then the Box won't close and then pretty soon we won't have a box okay so we want to make sure we keep let's try it again okay here we go that's right are you sure okay what about now if it's like this there aren't any edges that are gonna get torn off because everything's tucked in nice and neatly and everything will stay and in its place okay are you guys ready to play yes so here's what I'm gonna do we're gonna have these are gonna be our central rotations for today so we're gonna have some new centers so I'm gonna go ahead and rip you guys I'm gonna be walking around to make sure that number one you understand number two that you are following the guidelines and expectations that we just talked about and how to take care of these games okay all right are you ready I hope that helps you get kind of an understanding of how I introduce the center's to the students and what I expect so if the students come up to me and the box looks like you know if it looks like this here you go mrs. caller I'm gonna look at them and say you know what this isn't quite your clothes this isn't quite how we do it and some of these are a little bit tricky for them to close so some of it is just they just need to learn how to do it you know more one on one which is fine I mean you have to be patient with them too but every single time I'm teaching them how to close the boxes because what will happen is these boxes will get torn up and then you don't have a box and then you have to buy plastic bins and hash tag ain't nobody got time for that well I'm gonna walk you through all of these centers just really quick to kind of talk about how I use them in the classroom and how the kids absolutely love them I want to kind of showcase them so um this is the alphabet learning box so each lock has a corresponding key and on the back of each lock is a picture of so there's the end and then there's a picture of a word that starts with that letter and then there's a corresponding key so one thing that I love to do with these is I put these out on tape I like whenever I set these up I typically just put them out on a table and then I make sure that there's enough room for them to kind of dump the locks out dump the keys out and kind of find the correct lock and all of that but another way that I use this and the kids absolutely love this like I said I'm not really a worksheet teacher I've said that on a previous vlog I love the kids up and learning and engaged with whatever we're doing in class and so I'm you may have heard the term exit tickets what I like to do is um lock these around the room so like I'll lock up on my pink Playhouse I'll lock them like all over all my bins on just whatever I can get a lock around so there's 26 different locks obviously 26 different letters in the alphabet but then what I will do is I will give students depending on how many I have you know two or three keys and and basically what I say is okay when you're done with that activity you can use these as your exit tickets so you have to find these locks and once you bring me these locks then you can move on to the next activity and the kids go wild like this is the best incentive for them because whatever we're working on they want to get to this and so they'll do their best job so that's one way that I use this Center and the kids absolutely love it I will make sure to link all of these down below next Center is build a letter activity center and it's just basically um developing a letter recognition and letter formation and works on fine motor skills so they get a card and the cards are differentiated so there's um on one side it shows how to build it on the other side it shows the letter and then they use these different shapes to build the letter the students really love this and there's some students that I have that are really drawn to this which really tells me that their brain works a certain way so I really take note of those students who really are kind of drawn to that mechanical I call it like in here we call it like tinker ish kind of like tinker tinker minded where they like to build and create and so I try to take note of that and for my students but a lot of my students really love that one the next one is this find the letter activity center and I have to kind of be careful because there's little beads inside so I don't want to tip it over so the students will use the tweezers to find the letters which helps them develop those hand muscles um you know they're basically working to form that pencil grasp and they will find the letters on their cards and there's a bunch of different cards in here so the students love this one too all right the next is this build a word houses its build a word houses activity center so inside are all of these different blocks that the students um basically build CBC words and I love this because it's differentiated in that so let me show you okay so the roof of the house is has a picture of a dog and then on the other side has the word dog students who are still you know learning how to sound out each letter and blend there's the word on that side but then for students who already know how to they can look at the picture and sound it out the table they can Center it up themselves this one I was probably most excited about because I'm always trying to figure out ways to help teach the students um basically letter formation you know and this is something that you can use for that so basically this is the write the letter activity center inside comes these little flip books and there are every letter of the alphabet okay so they flipped through and it's like a little table easel so it expands out and then you set this down on the table and then the students use these little drawing boards to write the letters now I said earlier that sometimes I hope three to four students in one Center they only come with two of these but if you have whiteboards in your classroom you could totally use white boards in erasers with this Center too so that you could get you know two to four students with this and then each student would just share a book I have a lot of tinkers tinkerers who's that a word I don't know in my classroom students who love to build and create and so we have a whole tinkertown area over here with like puzzles and Lincoln Logs and all of that kind of stuff I saw these um basically see inside magnetic blocks I knew that my students were going crazy over him and I was 100% correct they asked for this every single day and so um I think this might actually be something that I put in our station or to your town station they absolutely just love this and there are some pictures on the back of the box that show like different things you can build with these but these are wonderful because they're magnetic which in my opinion is gonna help keep them lasting longer put these together and they make different things and on the Box are all these ideas that they can use to play and create I'm gonna link all of these things down below so if you're interested in any of these please click on the links down below to snag yours and there's also a coupon code down there that expires June 30th so make sure to click on that for 20% off any non sale item alright moving on the lakeshore sent me these look and solve math boards so there this one is edition this one is subtraction and then this one is comparing numbers so I give the students all three of the boards so that if I have you know two three four students at one Center then I have them all work together on them the way that I teach the students this is that this is like a mouse so this sign the symbol greater than or less than sign is going to it's like a hungry alligator so it's always gonna want to eat the bigger number so if his mouth is pointed this way he's gonna want to eat the bigger number so it's five bigger than eight no eight is bigger than five so we're gonna flip his mouth around so that he's eating as many of those berries as possible so then once they're done with that they can flip the card over to check their answer and this is differentiated so if you have students you don't quite understand this and they actually show the berries on there which is which is great and then they would just pick another card so there's a bag of cards and they would just slide the card in there and then they would work so these are wonderful especially if you have students for example who maybe don't quite understand subtraction or addition yet maybe during your morning works work time like if you have a like we always do morning works I have them work on a couple things in the morning they have like a binder that they work on but if I need one student to have a little bit more time with addition or subtraction I can hand them one of these boards and say hey we're just gonna work on this this morning okay if you have any questions you let me know and then that way they're getting you know that hands-on one-to-one correspondence in there comparing numbers they're you know touching sometimes students just need to like actually touch you know the objects to understand it so this is a great Center for that too there's a leapfrog song that we sing in class so it's a I owe you where the vowels where the glue we stick the words together with every sticky letters okay so because there are five different vowels that means that I can get five students even for students at this Center and they could be working on this for a long time so this is that I can build simple words it's Center I this is probably my favorite Center if you have like a guided reading time or even just like a small group time this is great for that so basically what comes in each drawer are all of these little letters and they're like foam letters and a bunch of different word cards that correspond with that vowel so the word is on that side the full words on that side and then on this side there's um one vowel that's missing so they can do this Chuy's they can either put the vowel in the middle or the missing letter in the middle for there's like this one doesn't have you know it's a consonant that's missing knocked about but um they find though the consonant or the letter that's missing or on the other side they can actually build the word so on top of this they would put you know WETA see if i can do it okay okay so they were right over top w ET and then we would blend and sound it out together so what at wet wet okay so this is wonderful for that and there's a bunch of cards that come I want to say there's two for probably like 10 to 12 that come in each of that each of the drawers um and then they have the pictures as well so for like ll learners this is great because it has a picture and a word so if you're really trying to extend but Cabul areas well this is a great Center for that this next Center wasn't actually sent to me by Lakeshore Learning but it is a Lakeshore Learning Center that I already had and so I wanted to grab it just because it is another awesome Center from lakeshore and my kids absolutely love it so I'm gonna grab it so I bought this Center over the summer this last year and it's the launch and learn alphabet and this is more like a board game set up I mean not a board game but each student gets a card and then they've put all of their consonants and letters inside this little launcher and they press this button and this little letter pops out and so if they have that letter they call out the letter and then they get to put it on their on their board it's up to four players which is great for a Center and you know if you're trying to get several students in involved and so this is another one I'll link this down below like I said this wasn't sent to me but this is another one that I had in class already that it's just an awesome Center these centers are built with the teacher in student and classroom in mind they are gonna last they're very good quality they don't break easily they don't rip easily and so these are all like you get your money's worth when you purchase these syndrome so lakeshore sent me this special little coupon code that I can put in my description in case you wanted to click on it I think you get 20% off any non sell item and so you can click on that link if you want to snag these scepters I think it expires I want to say the 30th of June so I just want to take a second to recap what I talked about so number one the most important thing that you can do before you introduce centers is talk about your expectations what do you expect as a teacher how do you expect these centers to be taken care of you need to communicate that all to your students in a way that they understand make it easy for them to visualize so open the box shut the box like you want them to put the things away like you want them to give them the expectations so that they know the guidelines they know what to do and they know how to have fun with these centers the second thing that I talked about was how I use center rotations so I typically will put centers around the room and then I assign partners and then they just basically rotate around and their goal is to try to get through all of the center's by the end of our Center time each Center is not timed but when they are done completing that activity or completing that Center then they are free to move on to the next Center and I always have more centers out than I do groups so that there's always good free choice for everybody if they get done with the center they can move on to and have one or two choices to choose from in the classroom and they're not having to wait on their partner their fellow classmates to get done and then the third thing I talked about we're just these awesome centers I mean there are so many different options here that you can use in your classroom if you're an educator or a teacher these are wonderful at home as well I actually have several of these centers and games activity centers at home for my own children thanks guys for watching to the very end if you found this video helpful if you liked anything make sure to hit that like button click that subscribe button you can also check out this video from lakeshore that I did a couple months ago on flexible seating it's a really good one and there are some really awesome ideas in there if you are considering using flexible seating in your classroom so that's it guys that's a wrap that's all I've got for you today I will see you guys in the next video bye [Music]

Channel: The Kinderhearted Classroom - Elizabeth

Views: 27,850

Rating: 4.968102 out of 5

Keywords: #lakeshore, #teaching, #centers, #student, #kindergarten, #awesometeacher, #classroom, #classroomorganization, #classroomtips

Id: LdGqmBU4iCI

Length: 19min 38sec (1178 seconds)

Published: Sat May 26 2018