Promoting literacy through centers.

The center approach to learning is an established, child-centered strategy that provides opportunities for children to engage in hands-on learning, interact socially and solve meaningful problems. Teachers using a center approach usually create a literacy center, which focuses on several literacy activities and occupies one area of the classroom. Promoting literacy through centers, however, should involve a much broader range of literacy experiences. Literacy must be integrated into all centers, creating a literate environment.

Centers: Contexts for Literacy Learning

Creating a literate environment through centers embraces key concepts about the contexts in which children learn and become literate.

Meaningful and Functional Experiences. The center approach invites children to use literacy while engaging in a variety of meaningful and functional experiences. For example, children can read directions at the Art Center, discuss ideas at the Science Center and write creative word problems at the Math Center. Writing a note at the Mail Box Center is more meaningful than copying sentences from a worksheet.

Morrow (1993) suggests that "children are more likely to become involved in formal reading if they have seen reading, writing, and speaking as functional, purposeful, and useful" (p. 115). In the center approach, literacy is a tool in the process of learning rather than a task to be completed.

Social Experiences. Centers provide opportunities for children to socialize. Children are social beings and social interaction allows them to acquire a framework for interpreting experiences (Bruner & Haste, 1987). Centers' social nature invites children to talk about discoveries, help each other and solve problems together: Teale (1982) states that literacy experiences are significant to the child according to the degree of accompanying social, collaborative interaction. Interactive literacy events teach children the societal function and conventions of reading, link reading with enjoyment and satisfaction, and increase children's desire to engage in literacy experiences (Morrow, 1993). In centers children read recipes together (Home Center), read a book with a friend (Library Center), recite poems with friends (Poetry Center) and act out a story with classmates (Drama Center). Each literacy experience becomes an enjoyable social event.

Language Experiences. The social nature of centers increases language activity - the foundation of all literacy learning (reading, writing, listening, speaking). Clay (1991) suggests that "children who have not been as active in exploring what they can do with language should have more difficulty with reading than other children. After all, reading is a language activity" (pp. 37-38). Consider the language use at an Art Center ("soft," "pale blue," "diagonal lines," "rough texture"), the Science Center ("experiment," "investigate," "classify," and content-specific words such as "stamen," "vertebrae," "galaxy"), the Social Studies Center ("timeline," "invention," "equator," "habitat") and the Math Center ("equal," "greater than," "fraction," "trapezoid").

Immersion Experiences. The center approach daily immerses children in a variety of reading, writing, listening and speaking experiences across the curriculum. Children read directions, fictional books, factual texts, songs, poems, peer-written books, computer software and even printed material on the walls. They write notes, word problems, reports, newspaper articles, observations, books, labels for maps and graphs, and scripts for puppet plays. They listen and use peer language in informal conversations, book language when retelling a story, and content language in social studies, math and science experiences. Children learn about language use through the natural processes of exploring, inventing, discovering and creating at centers.

Practice Experiences. Centers also provide children with opportunities to use literacy in practical ways. Cambourne (1988) calls this process engagement and suggests that children need time and opportunity to use and practice their skills in functional realistic ways. Holdaway (1986) suggests that children practice what they have learned, experimenting without direction or supervision. At centers, children can use their literacy knowledge and skills in meaningful ways, reading with a Big Book, writing about observations at the Science Center and role-playing a mother reading to a baby at the Home Center.

Choice Experiences. Engagement or practice depends upon children establishing ownership of the process by choosing their literacy experiences and taking responsibility for their own learning. Cambourne (1988) suggests that taking responsibility for one's own learning allows learners to make decisions about their own learning. Choice does not mean children can choose not to learn, but rather that children can make choices commensurate with their own knowledge and abilities.

Open-Ended Experiences. Open-ended literacy experiences allow each child to successfully engage in an activity at his or her own skill level. Narrowly defined literacy centers do not allow all children to participate. In an open-ended writing center children's writing may vary from a story with three sentences to a story with three paragraphs. Thus, each child writes at his or her ability level.

Centers That Promote Literacy

Teachers can create centers that provide opportunities for children to use all aspects of literacy (reading, writing, listening, speaking) in meaningful ways. The following centers all promote literacy:

* Big Book Center. Read and discuss Big Books, shared reading texts and class-made books.

* Overhead Projector Center. Read illustrated stories from overhead transparencies created by children.

* Listening Center. Listen to taped books. Write new story endings or dialogue. Create story maps. Tell a friend about a favorite part of the story.

* Library Center. Read and discuss favorite books.

* Poetry Center. Read, recite and listen to poems. Write original poems.

* Letters Center (for younger children). Play with letter puzzles using magnetic, sandpaper and flannel-graph letters. Read alphabet books.

* Read the Walls Center (for younger children). Wear sunglasses (with the glass removed) and walk around the room using a pointer, reading the print on the walls.

* Writing Center. Design book covers. Write original stories. Read and listen to other children's writings.

* Drama Center. Act out familiar stories, poems or the children's own story scripts to help them gain a sense of story and use more elaborate language.

* Flannel Board Center. Use flannel figures to retell favorite stories.

* Puppet Center. Use puppets to tell familiar stories or own stories.

* Music Center. Listen to records or tapes, reading words from books or posters.

* Art Center. Paint, sculpt and create. Tell or write about art.

* Construction Center. Build with blocks, Lego[TM] or other materials. Tell, explain or write about the constructions.

* Math Center. Use math manipulatives. Discuss how problems can be solved. Write story problems or number poems and stories.

* Science Center. Explore and investigate specific topics such as rocks, frogs and change. Read about the topic, write observations and discuss findings.

* Home Center. Play house in a literacy-enriched play center that contains literature, recipes, telephone books, newspapers, pencils and paper.

* Play Center. Play in thematic centers such as dinosaur land, a space ship or a rain forest in order to encourage children to use content- specific vocabulary and to create stories.

* Work Center. Play grocery store, office, school, restaurant or airport in order to use specialized language. * Puzzles and Games Center. Play Boggle[TM], Scrabble[TM] and Lotto[TM] to encourage work usage.

* Recording Center. Record stories and listen to each other's recorded stories.

* Computer Center. Read software. Write, edit and print own stories.

* Research Center. Read and discuss encyclopedias, factual books, maps and globes to investigate topics.

* Current Events Center. Read and discuss current newspaper and magazine articles.

* Mail Box Center. Write and read notes to each other.

* Social Studies Center. Locate, read and organize information. Read maps and globes. Classify concepts.

Centers that promote literacy are not just for primary-age children. Centers also allow older students to practice literacy skills. Older children will probably need fewer centers, however, since they will spend more time at each center. Select five or six centers where children can use their literacy skills across a thematic unit of study. If you are studying habitats, for example, set up a Library Center for reading fictional stories about habitats, a Listening Center for listening to a short chapter book on habitats (one chapter per tape), a Research Center for investigating various habitats, a Habitat Project Center where math skills are used to create an actual habitat, an Art Center where scale models are drawn and labeled, and a Writing Center where children will write directions for building a certain habitat and create fictional stories.

The center approach promotes literacy by giving children real reasons to write, discuss, read, speak and listen. Literacy experiences are built into each classroom center, immersing students in language. Students practice their own literacy skills through meaningful experiences, social interaction and language use. These literacy experiences will become more powerful when students are given choices and the experiences are open-ended.

References

Bruner, J., & Haste, H. (1987). Making sense: The child's construction of the world. London: Methuen.

Cambourne, B. (1988). The whole story. Auckland, Australia: Ashton Scholastic.

Clay, M. M. (1991). Becoming literate: The construction of inner control. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Holdaway, D. (1986). The structure of natural learning as a basis for literacy instruction. In M. Sampson (Ed.), The pursuit of literacy: Early reading and writing. Dubuque, IA: Kendall / Hunt.

Morrow, L. M. (1993). Literacy development in the early years. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Teale, W. (1982). Toward a theory of how children learn to read and write naturally. Language Arts, 59, 902-911.