[benteach]

Help _ i need a quick and effective way to do rotation stations with my 19 students...I have tried a velcor chart as well as writing it on the board..the centers my students will be going through are
SRA
Successmaker (computer program)
Media Center/Independent Reading
Guided Reading
Envelope Centers

Listening does not work with CD players as children switch it to a radio station.

[JSue]

I am not sure how often you do centers or how much time you have to do them. You could have 3-4 in a group to rotate to each center. I have a center chart which I purchased from our local teacher store (if you would like to know the brand let me know, I will check at school). I have the students names on index cards and the center pictures on the chart. I then have the students move to the center they are suppose to be at. We meet in the lesson area after each center and do a part of calendar or have a minilesson. I rotate the pictures and send the students off to work on their next center. Hope this helps.

[EarthMonkey]

I have pictures that fit with various workshop and I rotate the pictures and keep the students groups in one place. I also have a variety of secondary workshops that the children move to upon finishing their first workshop. You also might move the cd player out of the children's reach or give consequences if they mess with it because a listening center is a useful thing for children.

Some of the secondary workshops that are easy to implement are: Writing around the room (the children copy writing from around the room); reading around the room (the children read different things around the room); make word puzzles and have the students put them together; lots of words children then seperate words based on sounds, antonyms, or synonyms; pocket chart (the children take poems that you have put on sentence strips and cut up they then put them back into the poem); browsing books which are books the children have already read to reread, and draw about a story they read.

[vbubbles1874]

I teach pre-k so this may not work, but I have 5 groups of 4 and I give each student a clothes pin with a shape on it. I then set out 5 different centers and the kids work together for 20 minutes (use an egg timer). We rotate until everyone has done all the centers. I cuts down on noise and arguing. I was surprised at how well the kids adjusted and how quickly. Now they ask for the clips.

Hope that helps.

[strive4best]

I just finished my student teaching last month and my mentor teacher had the same problem that you had with center rotation. She decided instead of rotating centers every 20 minutes, she would just rotate them daily. She had a Reading Center, Spelling Center, Computer Center, and Art Center. This is the following schedule that she used:

Monday
Group 1-Reading Center
Group 2- Spelling Center
Group 3-Computer Center
Group 4-Art Center

So on Tuesday Group 1 went to Spelling Center, Group 2 went to Computer Center, Group 3 went to Art Center, and Group 4 went to Reading Center and so on. This way by Thursday all of the groups had been to each center at least once. It worked very well!!!

[soph]

I have labels for the centers for each day. Those stay put. I have the kids pictures that have a sticky back. I move their pictures each day for the centers they do. I have tried a hundred different things this year, and so far this has worked the best.

[sala]

I use a circle on top of a slightly larger circle - student names on clothes pins clip to the outer circle and the inner circle has velcro to place center cards. (6centers daily with 24 students - mixed 2nd 3rd)

Every 15 minutes I (actually a student)turns the management circle clockwise one space. Students quickly learn to look at the circle and go to the right center. I pull students 'randomly' for guided reading and various supports. This was a little time intensive to set up but it is so simple to maintain daily it was worth it. - When we don't have enough time to get to all the stations in our language arts block we just continue the following day. Some stations produce small 1/2 sheets for accountability and others produce nothing. I can see from my support desk that they are goofing off or not. Sometimes I don't pull kids to help for a rotation just to check in on stations. - I do this much more in the beginning weeks.

Hope this helps makes sense and gets one more idea out there. Centers are the way to go if you can get students to self manage most of the details. I don't know how else I would get everything done in the day.