As you all know by now, we love having efficient and effective procedures and routines. We believe they’re the backbone of your classroom management and the key to having everything else in your classroom run smoothly. However, there’s one routine we’ve neglected to discuss, which is setting up your centers. The complexity of successfully run centers is why we’ve never discussed them before. In today’s episode, we’re sharing strategies for how to set up centers at the beginning of the year.

For all the resources mentioned in this episode, head to the show notes: https://www.secondstorywindow.net/podcast/how-to-set-up-centers-at-the-beginning-of-the-year

Resources:

• Daily 5 Work on Writing Station
• Daily 5 Work on Writing - Monthly Resources
• Bostitch Office Hole Punch
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Emily 0:36

Hey there. Thanks for joining us today. In today's episode, we're sharing our tried and true strategies for successfully launching centers and sharing a teacher approved tip for preparing for new students.

Heidi 0:49

We start our episodes with a morning message, just like we used to do at morning meeting in our classrooms. This week's morning message is, how do you manage student water bottles?

Emily 1:00

And this is a problem that a lot of teachers are dealing with right now. Lori, Teresa, Masha and Cory have their students keep them in their cubbies. Teresa adds that she makes sure to teach when it's a good time to get a drink and when it's not like in the middle of the lesson. Very smart. Katie's students keep theirs on the counter by the sink because she was worried about ruining Chromebooks.

Heidi 1:23

Yeah that's not a good mix.

Emily 1:24

No valid concern. Michaela has students keep theirs beside their desk leg on the floor. She says, bottles still get knocked over, but it's nowhere near as loud as it was dropping from the top of a desk, which that makes sense.

Heidi 1:37

Yes, especially if you have a tile floor.

Emily 1:40

Oh, yeah. Krista made a water bottle parking lot on top of a shelf, and says it works well. That's a good idea. Jennifer's class has lift top desks, so she uses an S hook over the edge that lets water bottles hang off the side of the desks, which is brilliant, if you have that option. Someone needs to come up with something like that that works on non liftoff desks.

Emily 2:05

Kim has a large hanging shoe organizer by the door. The kids know to rinse and refill them in the morning. After too many spills, Lori has her class store their bottles in their backpacks. Mary says training students to handle water bottles is the easy part. It's training the parents to buy a non spill one that's harder to manage.

Heidi 2:26

Yeah, that shouldn't be that hard. It is somehow.

Emily 2:30

And Leah had this to say. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I don't manage them. Kids have them on their desks, and sometimes they fall, but I just don't care. I've decided I have enough to manage, and water bottles are at the bottom of the list. If they fall over, kids clean up the spills. In the grand scheme of all the things we teachers have on our plates, this is one I'm happy just to let go.

Heidi 2:49

Go, Leah.

Emily 2:51

I know. And I said to her, if, if that works for you, good for you, because we all have to find things that we can let go. I don't think water bottles is one that I could let go, because I think it would really drive me crazy, yeah, but there are other things I think I could like, oh so good for Leah. If this is one that she's just, you know what, I'm not going to manage it, it'll be fine.

Emily 3:09

We'd love to know your tips and tricks for managing water bottles. Come join the conversation in our teacher approved Facebook group.

Heidi 3:17

As you are getting all of your procedures and routines in place for the new year, one of the big routines you probably need to tackle is centers.

Emily 3:26

Center are complicated which is why we've put off talking about them on the podcast. But the time has come and we can work through our center related headaches together.

Heidi 3:36

Oh, headaches for sure, headaches for days. Centers are so complicated because they're routines that have to be done independently, so that you as the teacher can work with kids in small groups or one on one. But of course, that raises the question of what those little darlings are doing while you have only four of them back at the table.

Emily 3:55

And so often the answer to that question is causing problems. But not only do centers create management headaches, but they create content headaches as well. How do we ensure that our activities are providing meaningful and relevant learning if they have to be done independently?

Heidi 4:11

Plus all of those independent activities need to address the variety of learning needs in our room, and they require a whole system of storing and swapping out materials. From the outside looking in, it's almost like whoever invented centers had a brilliant idea, but never actually had to put it into practice.

Emily 4:29

But there are just so many amazing benefits of working with small groups, we don't want to give that up. So what do we do about centers?

Heidi 4:37

Well, centers aren't the only way to free up time for small groups. If you have an educational aide in the classroom who can help, or maybe you've got enough technology and seat work options, you could keep kids learning independently without centers.

Emily 4:50

I know I've seen that done in my kids classrooms, where they're all working on their Chromebooks, doing something while the teacher is pulling small groups. Or you could make use of activity lists like a choice board or a must do may do list.

Heidi 5:04

That means if centers really are the bane of your existence, you have options. If you get creative, you can find multiple ways of keeping your class engaged while you teach small groups.

Emily 5:16

But centers do offer a lot of benefits that seat work doesn't. Centers are often a chance for kids to move. Centers can allow for collaboration and creativity and choice, all of those things are motivating and engaging for students.

Heidi 5:31

Over the years, I have done centers in a lot of different ways. I have done the four groups that rotate every 15 minutes through a set of three set centers and meeting with the teacher. I have done the complete opposite, where I changed out all of my centers every week and gave kids free choice of what to do, and I have done different systems in the middle.

Heidi 5:53

I've definitely earned my 10,000 hours when it comes to being a center expert. So hopefully we have got some helpful tips for you today, and let's start with the first tip, and that is to check out the Daily 5 book.

Emily 6:06

If you're unfamiliar the Daily 5 or five components of literacy that students should be practicing every day, like listening to reading, reading to self and reading to someone.

Heidi 6:16

The literacy part of that book is fine. I agreed with some points. I had big disagreements with other points. But when it comes to classroom systems, that book completely changed how I structured my class. First was their recommendation to use stations instead of centers, and second was their step by step framework for introducing those stations.

Emily 6:36

It's been a while since I read it, but I think the difference between a center and a station is that a center has an activity for the students to do at that center, and then the activity is switched out each week, and a station has a menu of activities that remain constant all year.

Heidi 6:52

Yes, so instead of me having to do my weekly Friday afternoon center refresh, I can feel it and pulling the file folder out. Oh, gosh, yeah, once I put an activity into a station, it stays in the station all year. Each station had a menu of activities to choose from, and because those activities stayed the same, I didn't have to worry about introducing the new activities each week, or kids wasting time because they were confused about what to do with the new activity.

Emily 7:20

This is where the balance of novelty and structure come in, establishing a clear structure limits wasted time and confusion. But how do you keep kids engaged?

Heidi 7:30

Well first I made sure that each station had a lot of options. I wanted enough choices to be engaging and to keep kids busy, but not so many choices that they were overwhelmed or that they forgot what to do for each one. And second, although I kept each station's framework the same all year, I changed the content each month.

Heidi 7:51

So my writing station always had journal prompts, but I changed the prompts monthly. Even though that content changed, the activity itself didn't change. That kept the novelty high in a way that didn't undermine the structure. And then I had a few options that were always available, like roll a Story Cubes and class journals and things like that.

Emily 8:12

And we do have a couple blog posts about this, so if you want to see it all in action, head to the show notes for links.

Heidi 8:19

With actual photos from my classroom. Didn't have a lot of those.

Emily 8:22

Yeah and they really tell a story of how long ago we were first teaching second grade.

Heidi 8:29

Now, if I were back in second grade today, I would probably do something similar. I had literacy stations for writing, word work, and read to someone because fluency is so important. And then I had a math game station and a math fact station. Those were my five. I didn't do read to self as a station because I wanted my kids to read longer than the 15 minutes or so that they would have at a station.

Emily 8:51

Okay, so given your long and winding journey through centers, what would you say are the essentials to center success, Heidi?

Heidi 8:59

Well, first, I think a hard and fast rule is that no activity goes into a station or a center that hasn't first been introduced to the whole class. Sometimes you do have to get creative with those roll a story dice that were so fun. I didn't have a class set. I just had one set. So we went through the activity as a whole class. We rolled the dice, and then we worked together to write a story with all of us.

Heidi 9:22

My math facts station was organized by number. So it was like all of the facts for number six and all of the facts for seven, and then each number bin had those same set of activities with the content adapted for that number. I hope that makes sense.

Heidi 9:36

In order to teach students what to do, I made a class set of activities with the math facts for five so that as a group, we could work through each activity over several days. And I started with five because I wanted them to focus on learning the rules for the activities and not struggling with the content of the math.

Heidi 9:55

I will admit it was a hassle to make and store that many resources, but it the rest of the year, so much easier, because the kids clearly understood the expectations and knew exactly what to do with all of them.

So what's the next essential for center success?

Well, you have to make sure that you have enough materials in that center or that station to keep kids busy. If your structure is one, that there's just the one activity at a center, and when students are done, they can move on to the next thing. This isn't so important, but if students have to be at one center or one station for a set amount of time, you do need several options there.

And you can start small and add to it over time. You should, because you want to introduce your class to a few activities at a time, and then slowly add options, right?

Yes. And posting a list or a menu of activities definitely helps students make decisions quicker. You know, you're going to have those ones that are spending all their time looking over No, you know, yeah, a list really speeds that up.

Yeah. And, and a menu would help remind kids what all of their options are, because sometimes they're going to forget about something if it's stored where they can't see it.

And another tip that I stumbled on was having a must do activity before students can start their station activities. So before the Writing Center, students had to do a vocabulary card before their word work center, and my students did their word sort. I liked that because it meant that even if they weren't super focused on those station activities, that whole chunk of time didn't become wasted time.

So the key to this is making sure the must do activity is super short. You don't want your slower workers losing out on all their station time because they're doing work. Something like a math exit ticket would be great before a math center.

Yeah, I wish I had thought of that back when I was doing math stations.

Well, you should have asked me.

If teachers are interested in doing centers or stations, what are your tips for getting started?

My biggest tip is to go slow, to go fast. I think it may be still that from the military, don't tell them. If you don't want centers or stations to be a huge headache for you all year long, launch slowly and deliberately. I mean, so slow. Start with one station.

I'd recommend starting with a station where students aren't working together, if you have that option. For me, I like to start with my writing station. Day one, I introduce one of the writing activities to the class, like journal writing. I modeled what to do and introduced their journals. Each kid got to choose a prompt and write about it. If they finished before time was up, they could choose a different prompt. But that was all we did that day. We worked on this for maybe 10 minutes.

Day two, I introduced a new activity, like the class mailbox, everyone's favorite and everyone wrote a letter to a classmate. When they were done, they had the option of writing another letter or doing journals. So I'm just incrementally layering in activities.

I love that. That's a good way to do it.

And then once we had three or four activities, we started our more of our official writing station time. And this is from the Daily 5 book. I would go work at my back table, where I would normally be during station time. The kids could choose their writing activity, and I would time how long everyone stayed on task.

When I saw someone get off task, we just ended for the day. Then I'd gathered the kids for a discussion about how it went, and we would graph our time on task. I had to paper graph the whole thing.

That's such a huge help to having your centers or stations run successfully. We have to grow kids stamina for focus if we want them to be independent. And involving them in the process makes them much more invested in success.

Yeah. And then the next day, I might introduce a new choice for writing time, but I would make sure to include that station choice time at the end. We would look at the graph and set a goal. Okay, yesterday, we worked for three minutes and 41 seconds. Can we make it to four minutes today? What about five minutes?

So we would set our goal, and then we would repeat what we did before I'd be at the table, they would be working, and I'd secretly watch, once someone got off task, I'd end it, and then we would gather to discuss how they did.

I'm sure this takes a few days at the start. Oh, definitely. And it probably feels painful when you're itching to have everything up and running. But the good news is that all the effort that you put into building on task stamina pays off in every other activity you do during the year. Like most of the things we talk about for back to school, like putting in that effort for procedures and routines, all that effort up front pays off throughout the rest of the year.

Right. Taking this time now means that you are making October and November and December and all those other months a little easier by teaching kids directly and clearly the skills they need to be successful, engaged learners.

So your writing station is coming along. Now, will they ever be ready for a second station?

It might not feel like it, but I promise they will. And this is where that graph is extra handy. When students are able to do about eight minutes on task at that first station, it's time to introduce a second station.

After the writing station, I would introduce the word work station, and I introduced it in the exact same way. I introduced a few activities to the whole class when the students were familiar with enough activities to keep them busy at that station, I'd give them the chance to choose what activity to do, and then time how long they're on task.

Hopefully, all that practice with the writing station pays off and they're able to focus longer on word work, so that means you can get to eight minutes of on task time quicker, hopefully.

And that's when I would introduce the third station and so on. Until we had all five, I always saved the read to someone's station for last because that was the station with the most potential for kids goofing around, I'm sure you can imagine. And I wanted them to know that I was very serious about being responsible during station time, before entrusting them with the responsibility of staying on task while reading a joke book with their buddy.

So the order you introduce your stations or centers doesn't probably matter that much, but it will make things easier if you start with a simpler station first and save your complicated ones for the end.

Now if you aren't doing centers or stations and instead have something like a choice board, the same process would totally apply, introduce and practice each choice as a whole class graph, time on task and slowly add options over time. Remember, we're going slow to go fast.

So how did your students know which stations to do?

Well over the years, I've done different assigning groups, letting free choice. I ended on the system, where I let the kids choose their order of the stations for the day.

To manage the kids choices, I had some little pocket charts. I'm holding up my hands, and that's not going to help you at all in a podcast, but they're just the little ones, like a little bit bigger than a sheet of paper. Each kid had a row, and they would put little cards marking their station choice into their row. So for station one, maybe a kid picked math games. Station two is writing. Station three is read to someone and so on.

If I plan to meet with a student, say, for a reading group, a math reteach group, progress monitoring, or anything else, I might need to meet with a kid about I put meet with the teacher card in their pocket for that station time. So maybe all the kids in my lowest reading group might meet with the teacher during the second station time, and all the kids who needed practice telling time might meet with me during the fourth station time.

And how did you work this into your schedule if you weren't doing rotations?

Well I started using stations as my fast finishers, and it was heaven. I don't know why I haven't seen anyone else talk about this. But we just flowed from one activity to the next without needing any busy work or guidance.

So morning work time was from 9 to 915 if the kids finished early, there was a tub of books at their desk to read for a few minutes at 915 anyone who was done with morning work could just start their first station. So my kids were moving out all over the room. B\ut the kids who weren't finished continued to work on their morning work, and then they would just transition to their station when they were done.

It's just such a smooth way to flow between activities. And I didn't meet with anyone during that first station time so I could deal with my teacher tasks.

Station two happened after math. When students finished their math page, they just transitioned to their second station. Station three happened 15 minutes after that, and then we would go to lunch. Now, often math would go long, and that meant we only had time for one station between math and lunch, and that was fine. Sometimes you just have to drop something from your day. And I would much rather drop a station time than a lesson.

After my class came back from specialty classes in the afternoon, we had a science lesson, and then they would start station four. Then we had a big chunk of time where we would have our readers workshop, where I also had time to work with small groups and work one on one with kids. And then we'd have a quick language lesson and the kids will work on their last station until it was time to clean up for the day.

I know that this system might not work for everyone, but as a teacher, it was just such a relief to just flow gently from one activity to the next without having to have so many formal stop clean up and move on to the next thing transitions. The kids stayed busy. They were engaged in learning. I didn't have to come up with a lot of busy work to keep them on task, and they did most of it independently. It was it was really heaven.

I love that, because there's way less time for kids to just get bored and feel like they're just filling time until you're ready to move everyone to the next thing.

Yeah, everyone was just kind of working at their own pace and on the things that they needed to practice.

I love it. Creating an effective classroom system that lets you work with small groups is a complicated task, whether you're doing centers or stations or a choice board or something else.

Remember these three foundational principles. First, go slow to go fast. Introduce your system piece by piece, and intentionally build stamina for staying on task. Second, don't expect students to do anything independently that you haven't first taught to the whole class. And third, work to balance novelty and structure by changing the content, not the whole activity.

We would love to hear how you make centers or stations work. Come join the conversation in our teacher approved Facebook group.

Now let's talk about this week's teacher approved tip. Each week we leave you with a small, actionable tip that you can apply in your classroom today. This week's teacher approved tip is make a list of what students need. Tell us about this, Heidi.

Well, now that you are into the new school year, do your future self a huge favor and make a list of what your new students need. Hopefully you made a few new student packs for supplies when you were setting up your classroom.

And if you didn't hurry and do that now. Grab a gallon zip lock or some larger zipper pouches and load them up with a pencil and whiteboard marker and folder and everything else your students will need.

But the supplies are only half the prep of getting a new student ready for your classroom. You also need to incorporate your new student into your class systems. Maybe you need to assign the student a number, label a cubby and a coat hook. Add their name to the job chart rotation. Make a popsicle stick with their name on it. Add a pocket to the book checkout system. Let specialty teachers know about the new student and a million other little tasks.

And then there are all the online sites and apps where you need to add the student. It's easy to forget a step or two, so do yourself a huge favor, and make a list of everywhere that that new student needs to be added.

And then you can print the list and include it in your new student pack so you have it exactly where and when you need it. It kind of reminds me of when we had that tip from Sam from Engineer Does Education, where she was talking about having SOPs in the classroom. This is like making a new student standard operating procedure. So you know, every time you get a new student, you got to do all of these things. I love it such a good idea.

To wrap up the show, we are sharing what we're giving extra credit to this week. Emily, what gets your extra credit?

Well get excited because I'm giving extra credit to my new hole punch. I needed one the other day. I remember that day, yes, I almost had to get one from Heidi very late at night, because mine was nowhere to be found. Of course, children.

I know, when I went online to order a new one, I realized that I've only ever owned the super cheap hole punches, you know, the ones that are so terrible to use that it feels like it's not even aligning when you're using it takes all of your strength. So then, when I saw this boss stitch easy squeeze, I decided I was gonna spring for the fancy hole punch this time. It cost a whole $6.And I can confirm that it is actually easy to use, and it is worth maybe couple extra dollars to get the fancy hole punch. I could punch holes for hours. Now, I just have to keep my kids from wandering off with this one.

Yeah, you might need to zip tie it.

I know it's getting to that point with these children. What are you giving extra credit to Heidi?

Well, this is from a little company that maybe you haven't heard of, but I'm giving extra credit to Google Sheets. I know everyone like Google's just everywhere, but I feel like I plan my whole life in sheets. And I know there are apps out there specifically designed as planners, but for some reason, I just keep coming back to Google Sheets, because it's, it's really just so easy and handy to use. And it's my grocery list. Is there, my to do list notes for work. I just put it all in sheets. It's kind of my only link to sanity.

And you can use it across all your devices. I love that you can, like, start it on one, pick it up on the other.

Yep, I can pull it up on my phone in the middle of the grocery store and check what I need to get. It's real handy. So yeah, and it's free.

Yes, win. So if you're broke from your $6 hole punch, don't worry. Google Sheets won't cost you anything.

That's it for today's episode. Remember the foundational principles for introducing centers or stations, and don't forget this week's teacher approved tip to make that list for your new students.

If you enjoyed this episode, we would love if you shared it with a teacher friend who might enjoy it as well. It's the best way to help our show reach new listeners.