Renovating Literacy Centers for Middle Grades

Source: 
Hodges, T. S., & McTigue, E. M. (2014). Renovating literacy centers for middle grades: differentiating, reteaching, and motivating. Clearing House, 87(4), 155-160. doi:10.1080/00098655.2014.886550

Summary:
I am always looking for new ways to keep students engaged in their learning and also working collaboratively while they do so, the article "Renovating Literacy Centers for Middle Grades: Differentiating, Reteaching, and Motivating" by Tracey Hodges and Erin McTigue touches on this subject. The article begins with descriptions of what disinterested and unengaged students might look like during a traditional whole group lesson. It goes on to explain that as the industry is moving towards globalization, teachers need to move away from students working independently and move to more student collaboration. Hodges and McTigue (2014) define literacy centers as "a framework of short, independently oriented activities conducted in small groups and focused on teaching specific literacy standards" (p. 155). From their experience in the classroom, the authors suggest that the centers include activities that are easily updated to match the standards and objectives but aren't something that need to be recreated. They also suggest that the centers change every 10 minutes, with each center focusing on one specific skill. 

After introducing the idea of literacy centers and suggestions for how to set them up, Hodges and McTigue go on to discuss the advantages of literacy centers. The first advantage that is discussed is the idea of differentiation. With literacy centers the students are in specific groups and the centers are made specifically to fit the needs of the group. While students are working in centers, it allows the teacher to sit with a specific group in order to enrich, reteach, etc. Going off of the reteaching idea in regards to differentiation, reteaching overall is another advantage that is listed. With many concepts to teach and not enough time, centers provide for multiple opportunities for reinforcement of a topic during one class period. The third advantage that is listed is motivation and self-regulation. Centers give students time to practice in self-regulation because they are in charge of their own pacing while working collaboratively. The fourth and final advantage that is listed is the opportunity for technology integration and management. Some of the integration ideas that were listed are class blogs, online discussion boards, simulations, learning modules, and other online forums. These would allow for easy collaboration and monitoring by the teacher.

The next focus of the article is on specific types of centers that the authors have found success with in their language arts classrooms. The first type of center listed is a gallery walk. They explain gallery walks as an alternative activity to more traditional comprehension questions. Simple posters are made and hung around the classroom and students are challenged to write examples, definitions, etc. Another step to the gallery walk is to have students evaluate each other's work the following day. The following suggestion for center type is Interactive White Boards (IWBs). Hodges and McTigue explain that the advantage to IWBs is that students will be working collaboratively in a kinesthetic environment with the content displayed visually instead of the traditional paper and pencil. The third type of center listed is computers. Blogs are one technology tool that were mentioned specifically because they allow student writing to be published for peers. Using computers in the 10 minute centers doesn't allow for extended composition, but does allow for short, daily writing. The fourth center type listed is iPads or other iTechnology apps. They described a specific app, PoppletLite being used to created visual, interactive mind maps about the book, The Outsiders. After discussion of using apps in the centers, the authors alos listed other examples of how centers can be adapted to individual classes. Examples include: vocab races, WebQuests, concept maps with IWBs, and more. 

The final two topics discussed in the article are on student accountability and changing the traditional roles of students and teachers. Hodges and McTigue explain that clear guidelines and expectations need to be in place and reviewed often to ensure success with middle school students. They share their management tool that they call Center Completion Cards and resemble Bingo cards as one way to hold students accountable for their learning and center assignments. As far as changing the roles of students and teachers, they suggest that middle school teachers exploit some of the instructional techniques, such as centers, from earlier grades to include engagement, fun, movement, and creativity for students. In the centers approach, the teacher becomes the facilitator who provides differentiation and helps students to monitor their own progress. These centers help students to become a community of learners, which mimics what they will be part of in the real world.

Reflection:  
I have used centers or stations in my classroom before, but have not thought this deeply about the benefits that they can include. I most recently used them in my Spanish 1 classes, and revamped them from what I had done last year to make them completely technolgy tied. I liked the results that they had, although I gave students 15 minutes instead of the suggested 10 and because our class period are just over 40 minutes, our 5 stations had to be split between two separate class periods. 

I really like some of the specific ideas that they included for middle school students and language arts classrooms and think that many of the ideas listed would work in my classroom. I don't have access to iPads, only Chromebooks, but was recently introduced to Google Drawings in a new light and I could use it to have students creating mind maps and other visual representations of their learning in ways similar to Popplet that was mentioned in the article.

I recently also re-arranged my classroom in a way that makes centers more applicable to the set up. I want to try to utilize centers a lot more often in my classes, and not just my Spanish 1 class. The benefits that were listed in the article were the same benefits that I noticed when I tried centers in my Spanish class. Students had good conversations with each other, they were more engaged than if I had used a more traditional whole group lesson, they had more (positive) pressure to perform since they were  in smaller groups, and they enjoyed it. Many students mentioned how quickly class seemed to go by. I like the idea of a class blog for students to post to, and I like the idea of using technology in general to allow for students to collaborate with each other in new ways, see ideas easily from groups that they aren't a part of, and potentially collaborate with other classes. I have three language arts classes and they will be reading memoirs in small groups as part of our next unit. I can envision having a blog set up so that students who are reading the same book, but are in different class periods, can have conversations about the book. One of the centers could be creating questions to post to the blog and one of the other centers could be students responding to one another on the blog. Instead of writing general summaries of what they read, they could create a visual outline of the chapter, etc. The more I think about it, the more ideas I get!!