Read and Write the Room Center

The Read and Write the Room Center combines two very popular centers!  Your print-rich classroom will be your biggest tool.  The students will use the print-rich classroom to explore reading and writing letters, words, and sentences.  If writing, the students will write letters, words, and sentences that have meaning to them.  The students will have numerous print-focusing tools to use, and the print in the classroom will change and get richer as the school year progresses.

Possible Materials

This center has many possibilities which allows for student choice.  Below is a list of suggested materials that may be helpful to get you started:

*Pointers (fly swatters, wands, flowers, pencils, batons)
*Glasses ( fun sized, any style will do, empty the glass part from the frames if you wish)
*Finger puppets
*Framers (fly swatters with rectangular cut-out)
*Whisper phones
*White boards
*Writing tools (pencils, markers, pens, etc.)
*Paper (blank, lined, and specfic papers or searches)

The Read and Write the Room Center in Action!

The following pictures will show you three different ideas of activities that can be done in this center.  This will also show ways of assessing and leveling the activities.  These different activities allow the teacher to use formative assessment to see what skills the student is using and has mastered and what skills or direction to go in next with instruction for that particular child.

Row 1:  This  student is working on writing around the room and looking for letters with straight or curved lines.  This allows the teacher to see if a student has the understanding of how letters are made and if the student is able to visually discriminate between letter characteristics.

Row 2:  The student is writing around the room using the "Mystery Letter" activity.  This student is given a specfic letter and then the student goes around the room and only writes down words that begin with the given letter.  This activity allows the teacher to see and assess how the student is able to identify words and letters.

Row 3:  This student is writing the room and looking for "words in words."  This student  writes the big word on one side and the little known word on the other side of the recording sheet.  This allows the teacher to assess the student's word recognition skills and sight word recognition.


Additional Ideas and Resources

There are many ideas for this center.  Below is listed a few more ideas and resouces you can turn to.

*Find the letter
*Count the word or space
*Alphabet Search
*One Clap, Two Clap (syllable search)

*The Complete Guide to Classroom Centers by Linda Holliman
*  (Word Tally, Read the Room, Word in a Word)