Modified Reading Centers

Hello and Happy New Year! I am excited to get back to school and working with kiddos. Not many posts since the beginning of the year. I wanted to fill in readers about my modified reading centers. I teach reading while my co-teacher teaches math and we work with kindergarten students. This summer, I was fortunate enough to get Orton Gillingham training and I am also working on my reading endorsement and am done after my last class this spring! I wanted to use these strategies with my students, however, they are functioning at a much lower level than a typically developing student. So, what to do but modify! Please see earlier posts about how we set up our centers, but I will describe what the "orange" center works on during our reading center time, 30 minutes a day. They are either working with my co-teacher and I or any of our four instructional assistants. This set-up works well for when they are substitutes also.

One of the Orton Gillingham strategies I have adapted is the ABC folder, which is similar to the "card deck" if anyone is familiar with OG. It has the letter and a keyword picture below it and I paste the keyword picture into their folder for the letter we are studying each week. So, each student has a folder with the keyword pictures under the letter that we have reviewed in class. They work on this at the beginning of each center as a warm up. Some kids practice the routine-saying a, apple /a/ and pointing to the picture, and other students point to the letter or sound or picture the adult asks, some practice singing the abcs and following along, etc. It can be a "Game" warm up-find this letter, find this sound, find this picture, etc. like bingo.

I made a picture schedule and laminated it so the kids could check off each activity as they do it. It also helps the adults know what I am talking about with a picture of the object.

The second activity on Monday is the book box. We got a Donor's Choose grant for 6 listening centers so I have a bunch of books on CD which is a huge hit this year. I have audio jacks and two sets of head phones so the adult can follow along with the student and keep them on the correct page. This also works on book handling skills and pre-reading skills. They are into exploring books this year.

As you can see, Monday is all about book exploration and comprehension. We use the PODD, which I am not sure I talked about in another post, but it is a great communication tool in the classroom.

Here is Tuesday, you can see the ABC folder is a constant each day.  This idea was all about making vocabulary a tactile experience. I have a list of vocabulary words for the week paired with a picture and they try to find those things in the sensory bin. Usually it is themed or related to a book. Then, I throw in all the tactile letters for the letter of the week and they search for the letter.
I created a letter dice by velcro-ing letters to the sides of a large dice. They think it is such a fun game to roll the dice and see what letter they get-aiming for the letter of the week. We use the misses as learning opportunities. Did you get the letter of the week? no? What letter did you get? what sound does it make!?
I have an ABC big book that my co-teacher made. It has each letter of the alphabet on a big page written in upper and lowercase and in different fonts mixed in with some of the other letters of the alphabet. They have to be detectives and find the letter of the week.
Finally, there is ABC bingo which can be differentiated for each student.

Wednesday is all about writing and pre-writing skills. They build the letter using handwriting without tears pieces, they make the letter on play doh mats and they write it on dry erase or chalk boards. I find the kids that avoid writing like to use the water on the chalkboard to "erase" your writing. I also have a prewriting worksheet for them to complete. This particular group does not do much worksheets because they are very into pre-writing and aren't developmentally at the worksheet level.

Thursday is all about sorting. I have tubs where they will sort the objects based on the first sound they hear, then they will sort the letters based on what they look like. I pick the letter of the week and the past weeks letter and put a bunch of magnetic letters in a tub and they sort them into trays accordingly. There is also a letter box that I made over the summer with a bunch of objects to talk about with books that begin with that letter. Then, I have a worksheet where they sort pictures between this weeks letter and the week prior and they color the pictures. More working on handling a writing utensil.

Friday is kind of an overall alphabet day. They listen to songs we do during circle, each child has a name folder where they velcro match the letters of their name. There is a worksheet where they glue a letter on top of its matching letter and then they can play computer or puzzles that are alphabet themed.
The orange table is who completes these activities each week. I have a similar one that is even more academic for the red table, but along very similar lines, more worksheets.
Then, we have the yellow, green and blue table which are students working on more functional skills during center time-on the next post!