Are you looking for simple literacy stations for kindergarten that will last you ALL YEAR? In this blog post, we will take a closer look at the center rotations I used in my classroom throughout the whole year! These simple center activities allow students to practice literacy skills independently and in a variety of ways. Let me show you!
When I provide professional development for schools, I’m often asked: “How do you get your students to work independently so you can meet with your small groups of students?”
I discuss the importance of having anchor activities for literacy stations. These are meaningful learning activities that students can complete on their own.
You can’t meet with reading groups if the whole class is not also practicing meaningful work.
We work hard on building routines for the first 4-6 weeks of school. The beginning of the year is hard… like REALLY hard! Setting expectations is critical because YOU, as the teacher, have important work to do. You must be able to work with small groups while the rest of the class is engaged in meaningful independent practice… right?
I have never had an aide, so my little kindergartners need to be able to work independently. This is why I’m such a fan of anchor activities.
These kindergarten literacy centers essentially stay the same ALL YEAR. You just swap out the materials based on the season as well as student needs. So here they are:
Each month, new words go up on the wall in the writing center. My students can not WAIT to see what the next month will bring! Students go to this station and write… pretty simple!
At this station, there are five different types of writing options. Students decide which writing center activity they want to do, but they may only select one recording sheet. They must work on it the whole time. At the end of the month, new vocabulary cards are added, and the same five types of writing options are given.
There is no need to reteach this literacy center… just a few nudges as the year goes on to elevate the writing… simple! This is one of their favorite literacy centers!
Predictable sentences are a great way for students to practice multiple skills: Concepts about print, sight word reading, handwriting, illustrations, and matching words to the picture. These picture cards are added to the pocket chart while students build sentences.
We start the year with VERY simple sentences, but as the year progresses, so does the level of expectations. By mid-year, we are building multiple sentences and then writing them.
You can find these sentence writing center activities by clicking:
Students explore our classroom library in one of the simplest of literacy work stations!
In addition to the picture books that I own, I also found these simple books from Wilbooks! (Sidenote: Wilbooks doesn’t know me from the man on the moon, but I really like their books.) I have had these books for a long time and I have found they were perfect for my classroom.
If you have a limited personal library, like I did when I first started out, you can borrow some books from your school library or the local public library. Put them in a nice basket and your students will eat it up.
You can also take some of your classroom poems and make them into books. You can find these poems HERE.
We love our overhead center. This little dinosaur is super engaging for students! We start the year with simple letter formation on the board and then move on to other skills as the year progresses. Having multiple options and levels of difficulty at this word work center helps you to differentiate the activities.
Students build the words with magnetic letters and then write the words on the board with a dry-erase marker.
This is such a fun way for students to practice handwriting and strengthen their fine motor skills.
You can find the overhead station activities by clicking:
The listening center is a simple station to keep going throughout the year. I get my listening center books and recordings from Scholastic.
Then, I make response sheets that are specific to that text.
Multiple response options that grow over time sure helps to add rigor, but it also keeps this station fresh!
Listening to books is such a fantastic way to support your ESL students and the vocabulary of your students.
Another option is to make a songbook. Students can listen and read/sing along with the poems your class has learned.
I have also added QR codes to these lyric pages if you want to turn this into a sing-a-long station.
You can find these activities in my Poetry Music and Video units by clicking:
We have stamping activities from beginning letter sounds, to CVC words, to themes!
You can find all my Stamping Center units by clicking:
This print-and-play game is always a hit with students…gotta love the bingo daubers! The best thing about these hands-on activities is once the students understand the structure of the game, you can easily swap out the activities for a different skill. I introduce this game to a small group of students. Once students are proficient with the rules of the game… boom! It goes in a station!
You can see all of these Sequence games:
Again…spend some time teaching your students a few game structures and they’ll last you all year. We start the year off with this ABC game.
Then we can swap out the theme AND add some complexity. This ocean animal version is essentially the same game as the Chick-a-Chick-a Boom-Boom game. We have just switch the theme and changed the task to CVC words. In my Puzzles and Games Station, I usually have a few varieties of games so students can select the activity that meets their needs… hello differentiation!
Similarly… Roll, Say, Keep works the same way. Because it is editable, you can add your own sight words… or hang out with just an ABC version. This center is one that we used throughout the enter year. Changing the clipart means we have new centers!
Here is where you can find these literacy center games:
This literacy workstation is introduced during our small groups before it becomes a station. By mid-September, this becomes a staple option. It also goes well in an early finisher bucket! We start the beginning of the school year off with letter identification. Then we add sight word activities to this center. Student choice means students can select the skill they want to practice.
Flashcards + Timer = Good times! These are also editable, so you can add your own words. I usually make 3-4 sets of these cards that vary in difficulty. Again… it’s a simple way to differentiate this fluency practice station.
You can find all the varieties of this activity by clicking:
Whew… there you have it! Simple but meaningful tasks that are easy to differentiate. IF WHEN you start small groups, you will not have the time of go around the room and explain stations. Set yourself and, more importantly, your students up for independence. Then you will have the time and energy to do the very important work at your small group table.
If you’d like even more tips for running literacy stations for kindergarten, I have additional resources and tips. For example, here is a helpful blog post on how to foster student independence during literacy center time:
Here are a few more blog posts you may be interested in as you set up your own centers routine.
My teaching career allowed me to experience teaching in different classroom environments and grades. My heart belongs to early childhood education. My job is to make teaching FUN, ENGAGING, and EASIER. Welcome!
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10 Responses
I attended the webinar and I thought it was great. The content was spot on and I totally get the technical difficulties. Just makes it real. I have guiding reading set and LOVE LOVE LOVE it. Seeing good improvement in my students’ reading abilities.
Thank you so much!!!!!
Hi there Deedee,
Thank you so much for your blog posts and for sharing so much of your materials for free. I love all of it!
If you haven’t heard of storybird, it is an online tool where you can publish student poems and stories, share them with the school, parents, etc. There are also fundraisers on the site that you can raise money for the school. I thought I’d pass that along just in case you hadn’t heard of it.
Thank you again and Happy Veterans’ Day weekend!
~Shelby
I Love the ideas included in this post. Thank you. Can you provide the link to where you bought the notebooks you used to make classroom books of your poems. It’s seems like a great way to add to classroom library.
Hi Mary!
I’m not sure if I understand. The student notebooks (composition books) I got at WalMart. The actual poems are from my poetry notebooks. I hope that makes sense.
Here is a blog post I did on making the library versions.
Poetry Books
Hi! I have enjoyed reading your posts. They are so helpful. I am switching schools this year, but still teaching Kindergarten. The set up of stations will be completely different. I am used to having many students doing the same activities (5 choices) in different places around the room (Daily 5) versus rotating through multiple stations. When introducing and modeling your stations to your small groups, what are the “other” students busy doing? I like the idea of introducing and modeling small group versus whole group, but was unsure of what the rest of the class is busy working on while doing so. Thank you!
Hi, Maybe this blog post will help you.
How to Start Stations
I’m also doing a webinar this Thursday on centers! Just click on the “Workshop” link to sign up!