Harrell Section III, Chapter 20

Chapter 20

Teaching Strategy...Learning Centers: Extending Learning Through Hands-On Practice. Learning centers are places set up in the classroom where students engage in hands-on activities that allow them to obtain addtional experience in using new skills, expand skills usage to more closely match their individual needs, and work cooperatively with other students. (Harrell 119)

Learning Centers can be implemented into the classroom by following these five steps: Identify skills to be practiced, introduce the centers, document the center work, bring students up to date, and assess student progress and understnading.

Identify the skills that the students need to practice and set up places in the classroom with materials that can be used for additional, authentic, and meaningful practice that can be used on those skills.

Introduce the centers to the students by effectively demonstrating how the materials are to be used and what your expectations are for the activities, and how their work will be assessed. It is important that the rules are displayed in the centers so that the students understand that center work is part of their assigned lesson and will contribute toward their grade. The teacher should also discuss and model the rules about cleaning up center materials and how students move from one center to another.


Introduce a the method in which the students will use to domunt their participation in centers. Documentation of centerwork can be done in a variety o fdifferent ways. It can be as simple as a list of names at the required centers or a work folder in which they will place all center work done each day. Make your expectations very clear as to which centers are required and which are optional.

Bring your students up to date by informing them when center are changed. Model the steps and procedures of the new center activity so tht the students understand your expectations and requirements of the new center. Centers should be changed regularly to provide student with the opportunity to practice new skills as they are taught.

Asses student progress and understanding by collecting and assessing the quality of students center work. Evaluation of center work is vital for teachers to make sure that the students take their center work seriously.

Center could be beneficial for students of all ages. I would use centers in the first grade when teaching phonics. There are so many wonderful activities to implement into centers when teaching phonics. Segmenting and blending center can be used with simple materials such as plastic letters and a filing cabinet. Use the filing cabnet to hold the magnetic letters and the children can take any ending sound and blend beginning sounds to make new words. This is just one way that centers can be used in this area.

Center activities provide many strengths for academic learning in the classroom. They provide additional practice on skills that have already been learned, it is an effective way to implement a variety of skills into small group time and they are fun for kids.

Class management and time would be the only obstacle that I see being a problem when using centers, but as long as the rules are explained explicitly and the teacher has modeled how the centers should work, neither of these should cause a problem.

I think that centers are a great tool in the classroom. They keep students actively learning!