Many elementary schools are expanding literacy blocks in an effort to improve reading achievement. Teachers work with guided reading groups while other students work independently, often at a literacy center. Although specific activities may vary, the common thread is the colossal amount of work that students are not doing during this time. Such was the case at the school just outside Winston-Salem, NC, where Valarie Hazel, a 23-year veteran of public education, teaches.

Wasting time and opportunity

Most of the students here read below grade, some significantly. Perhaps as a consequence, many have become expert at avoiding work, usually quite loudly. Arguments are frequent and impassioned, even when the stakes are meaningless—a prolonged squabble over possession of a book that neither student intends to read or extended debate regarding whose turn it is to go first.

Valarie, a fourth-grade teacher, was frequently interrupted in her small-group instruction to redirect disruptive students. Transitions between centers were lengthy and chaotic. Much of her instructional time was consumed with managing student behavior.

Data-empowered, not data-driven

“I had been using materials from the resource room,” Valarie explained. “I just worked with what we had.” Because only a few of Valarie’s students read on grade level, the activities were simply too difficult. “They didn’t want to try because the work was too hard.” She could support students’ on-grade level efforts during guided reading groups, but independent work required tasks at which they could succeed in her absence.

Using a variety of assessment data, Valarie determined each student’s literacy skills and deficits, which dictated what activities she included in the centers. She tapped the wealth of free, reproducible resources available online, printing and cataloging dozens of learning games that reinforced a range of skills. This enabled her to quickly change out tasks as students developed greater competencies.

At each center, students tracked their progress. At the fluency center, for example, students logged the date, the title of the reading passage, and their words per minute for each of three turns. Although this can be used as an external accountability measure, its real value is allowing students to register an immediate payoff to their center work.

Logistics

For every activity, Valarie replaced complex instructions with kid-friendly language. These instructions were included with each center but only for reference purposes. Before placing an activity in a center, “I put the game on the Promethean board, and we all played it together. Then I made enough copies [so students] could practice in groups.” Only when she was convinced that students could administer the centers themselves did she allow them to work independently.

She created a rotation schedule and placed it where everyone could see it. Names of centers were inserted in a clear, plastic pocket chart. As students cleaned up from one rotation, Valarie moved the center names to a different set of students for the next rotation.

To further limit the opportunities for disruption and to increase time on task, Valarie shifted from student teams to student pairs. The smaller the group, the less downtime each student had between turns. Using her assessment data, she paired students who were within a few reading levels of each other, changing the pairings as student abilities changed.

Teachers with larger classes may assume they lack the necessary space for 12 or 14 centers, but none of the activities require an area larger than two desktops. Most are stored in pocket folders that the students retrieve from a box at the front of the room. Others, like the game Boggle, remain in their original boxes but sit on the same shelf.

Valarie accepts that students who have never been asked to self-regulate require continual practice. Further, disengaged students often need a personally relevant reason to persist at an activity, and so she may need to work individually with students to set literacy goals that are supported by their center work. Great teaching is not a place at which you arrive but a constant process of becoming.

Deb Teitelbaum joined the faculty of the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching in 2011. She holds a PhD in Educational Administration & Policy from the University of Georgia. She also taught high school English and theater in Lombard, IL, for 11 years, during which time she attained National Board certification. She is also on Twitter.