Reading Centers for Middle Schools
Literary centers encompass traditional reading centers, and include vocabulary centers and writing centers. Using reading centers in middle school helps motivate students because it allows them some responsibility over their own learning and lets them bounce ideas off their peers, appealing to the social nature of teens. Based on student needs, teachers can decide if they want to run centers weekly or daily and what kinds of reading activities to offer at each station.
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Vocabulary
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Set up activities that will emphasize the importance of knowing how to break words into syllables, and identifying vowels and consonants. Ask the students to select a strip of letters from a box and cut their letters out to form words. If a student has 12 letters, form, four- or five-letter words and see if it's possible to make a 12-letter word. Keep Scrabble games on hand for a similar version. Plan dictionary and thesaurus activities that will focus on teaching students the meaning of words, as well as synonyms and antonyms.
Reading
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At the reading center, students work in pairs to read chapters of the assigned novel the class is currently reading. Recommended books for middle school students may include Katherine Paterson's "Bridge to Terabithia," Elizabeth George Speare's "Sign of the Beaver," or Lois Lowry's "Number the Stars." Students will work through vocabulary lists pertaining to the novel, using context clues to decipher meanings of difficult words. They will answer comprehension questions by making predictions about the chapter before reading it, based on where the previous one ended, and seeing if their predictions were correct.
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Decoding Skills Center
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To become a more effective reader, students need to improve their decoding skills. At this station, offer a variety of activities that allow students to sharpen their skills in finding the tone, summary, and main idea of a story. Allow the students to pick a newspaper article, looking for hints on what the content might be about by scanning photos and captions. As they begin reading, ask them if the story reminds them of anything, and can they relate to it. After they finish the article, have students decipher facts and opinions by highlighting opinions with a blue highlighter and facts in pink.
Writing Center
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Show students how to write sentences grammatically correct, with proper capitalization, and punctuation and allow them to practice in pairs. They learn the importance of writing in a form they would like to read with fresh ideas, flowing organization, and proper voice. Teachers will demonstrate how to do a pre-writing map to get ideas flowing and form story lines and character maps. During writing centers, students can ask peers for advice on their pieces and use feedback to revise and edit them again.
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References
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