Literacy Stations

One of my favorite parts of my school day is Literacy Stations. It's one of my Kinders' favorite times, too. They are disappointed if something prevents us from doing them. Over the years my Literacy Stations have gone through a series of changes & tweaks to get to where they are now. I'm pretty happy with how they run now.

Sorry about the quality of this picture ~ it's pretty grainy for some reason. I wanted to share how I manage my station rotations. I have cards for all of the stations that we are currently using in these charts (from Target's Dollar Spot). We do two rotations per day ~ the green cards are first. Students work in ability level pairs in each station except for my table & games. These stations have four students. Unless I change the student pairs the name cards stay in the same place. I move the cards down one pocket, with the bottom cards moving to the top. I know when it's time to change the activities at my table when the green Mrs. Phillips card gets back to the top. This makes it easy to keep track of where we are in the cycle. Download the cards for free HERE.

This week we are playing a CVC word building game at my table instead of our regular guided reading lesson. This game can be moved to the Games station once everyone knows how to play it.

At the Word Work table students have lots of choices of activities. Very few of them involve a worksheet. This one is from Mailbox.



This CVC activity is from my Serving Up CVC Words. You can purchase it HERE.

I still have a couple old-school CD players. I figure as long as they work we'll use them. I also have a "boom box" a couple iPods, and an old iPhone for listening.

In addition to traditional writing station activities I like to include some fine motor activities. Here, a student is writing sight words in "Magic Snow." (salt & glitter) I found the plastic tub at Target & put it on a cookie sheet to contain the mess. Grab the editable cards for free HERE.

Our games station has a variety of literacy games ~ here these girls are playing Roll-a-Cube from my January Literacy Stations set. Get the bundle HERE.

This week I introduced a polar animal sensory tub. I'm in the process of creating cards to go into this tub, but because we are learning about polar bears this week I wanted to bring it in to let the kids play with the materials. We usually use tablets at this short table (see it's before picture in this past post), but the kids have chosen this new tub over tablets every time. (Yay! I'm not a fan of kindergartners staring at screens.)

My Kinders really love literacy stations. I love them because they give me time to work with small groups. It's a Win-Win!

I'd be interested to hear about your literacy stations. Please leave a comment to share what you do.