Reading Center Activities for First Grade

Promote independent reading with reading centers.

Reading centers are independent learning stations that provide first graders with opportunities to enhance their reading skills while gaining independence and taking an active part in their learning. To help students expand on their reading skills, decide what skills you, as a teacher, would like to be further developed, and provide centers that offer hands-on activities for doing so.

Books on Tape

Fill one of your reading centers with books on tape. Place age-appropriate books, tapes that feature oral readings of the books, tape players and headphones. Students select a book and read along as they listen to the tape. Books on tape promote fluency in reading, as the tapes provide an example of what fluent reading sounds like.

Story Sequencing

Being able to identify the main events in a story is a crucial part of comprehension. Fill this learning center with various activities that promote story sequencing. Place different pictures that depict key events in a story and have students arrange them in the correct order. Another idea is to write out key events on sentence strips; students have to read the strips and arrange them in the order in which they occur. A third option for this center is to invite students to illustrate the key events in a story themselves; provide them with a piece of paper that features three boxes, and they must draw pictures in each box that illustrate what happens in the beginning, middle and end of the story.

Making Sentences

Students make different sentences in this center. Write out different parts of simple sentences on different index cards. For instance, write "It was" on one card, "raining cats" on another and write "and dogs" on a third index card. Place the cards inside a folder or an envelope. Students must read the words on the cards and arrange them into at least two sentences; these sentences can make sense of they can be silly. They write down the sentences they've come up with, making sure to use proper punctuation.

Word Wall Stories

A word wall contains different sight words, or words that students have recently learned. Arrange a center in which students have to write at least three sentences that each contain at least one wall word. Students read the words on the word wall and select words that they like. They write down the sentences they've created and share them with the class at the end of center time. To make the center a bit more challenging, have students write a short story that features at least five word-wall words.

References

• North Central Regional Educational Laboratory: Learning Centers