What Are Reading Centers?
Kathy Collins
The term "reading centers" is challenging because it may very well suggest many different things to teachers. For this reason, I'll begin by describing what reading centers are NOT. Reading centers, as implemented in many classrooms affiliated with the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, differ from literacy centers or literacy work stations in which the rest of the students are working on a literacy task while the teacher is conducting guided reading groups or alternative versions of small small-group instruction.
Reading centers are not the same thing as literature circles or book clubs either, although they certainly have elements in common with these structures. In book clubs or literature circles, a group of students tends to read one book and talk about it, and then they move on to another text, which may be completely unrelated to the text they've just read and the readers. This is not a characteristic of reading centers.
So what ARE reading centers? Here is a simple, bare-bones description: a reading center is a couple of kids reading and talking about some books that go together in some way. They are using all the knowledge and strategies they've accumulated about reading and about life to think deeply about a topic of interest. For some reason, the image of musicians getting together to jam comes to mind whenever I try to explain the reading centers.
When I imagine musical friends getting together in a garage somewhere, I picture them playing for each other the new lick or groove or joint (or whatever the musical jargon is at this point) they've been working on. Then, as they all join in, I imagine that through their improvisation, the original little groove is adjusted, revised, and altered and moved in new directions. The whole process is energetic and joyful, and there is a feeling among the musicians that they are making something important and new.
Now, I will try to apply this scene from someone's garage to reading centers in, say, a kindergarten classroom. Reading centers are a sort of reading jam, in many ways. Readers get together with books of interest, and they read, then stop and talk back and forth to share ideas. This is the improvisation part -- the conversation may cause the readers to revise, alter, or move their thinking in new directions. The readers are engaged because they're reading and talking to serve their own purposes, to satisfy their own interests, and to meet their own goals. There is a sense of purpose, exploration, and exuberance shared by reading center partners.
For those of you who would prefer an explanation that's more concrete, here's a more detailed definition of reading centers:
A reading center is simply a set of texts that are connected in some way, and readers move from one text to another as they read to accumulate or revise knowledge, read to guide a life project, or read to explore an interest. The reading level of most of the texts in the reading center is accessible to the reader, and the reader talks about his or her reading with a partner and others in order to develop a deeper understanding of the particular topic, text, genre, etc., that connects the reading center texts.
Hmmm. That's not such a streamlined definition after all. Let me try a bullet point definition:
- A reading center is not a place in the classroom; it is simply a basket of texts that have been gathered together because the texts connected relate to each other in some way.
For instance, during the unit of study in which the students are learning how to read nonfiction well, there might be several different reading center baskets in the classroom library, such as Whales Center, Mummies Center, Ferocious Dinosaur Center, Dogs and Cats Center, Human Body Center, and so on. Reading partners choose a reading center to study throughout the course of a week or so. Here are some other examples of reading centers:
- Within a whole class cycle of author study reading centers, you might find centers like the following: Ezra Jack Keats Center, Eve Bunting Center, Joy Cowley Center, Byron Barton Center, Kevin Henkes Center, etc. In a more sophisticated approach to author study (for older students or students who are experienced with author study), you might find centers like an Authors Who Illustrate Center, Authors Who Write in Different Genre Center, Authors Who Write About School Trouble, Authors Who Write Funny Books, and so on.
- Within a cycle of character-based reading centers during a Character Study, you might find centers like the following: Poppleton Center, Titch Center, Mrs. Wishy-Washy Center, Bicuit Center, Judy Moody Center, Julian Center, etc. In a more sophisticated approach to a character study, you might find centers like Strong Girl Characters, Characters Who Overcome Huge Problems, Main Characters Who are Pigs (by this I mean actual pigs, not sloppy human characters), Characters Who Feel Lonely, Bullies as Characters, and so on.
- Within a cycle of poetry reading centers during a poetry study, you might find centers like the following: Silly Poems Center, Poems by Karla Kuskin, Poems about Snow, Poems with Interesting Titles, etc., Poems That Have Shapes, Poems by Langston Hughes, Poems About Dead Pets, and so on.
- Within a cycle of theme-based reading centers, the whole class might begin by studying a shared theme that is easily found in a wide variety of levels of books such as the theme of friendship, family, or school life. Once students learn together how to talk about a theme across books, they might create their own themed centers. You might find the following: Boy-Girl Friendships, Friends Who are Really Different, Friends Who Break Up Then Make Up, Families With Babies, Kids Who Have Divorced Parents, Siblings Who Fight, and so on.
- Within a cycle of concept book reading centers, you might decide to do a whole class concept, such as Alphabet Books, during which all of the partnerships would study alphabet books. Other kinds of concept book centers are things like: Number Books Center, Color Books Center, Books About Shapes Centers, Books about Opposites Centers, and so on.
- The books in the reading center are mostly all accessible to for the reading level of the students in the reading center.
In order to become stronger readers, students need to have as much time as possible to read 'just right books' which are texts students can read with at least 95%-100% accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. In reading centers, it's essential that most of the books in the center are just right for the partners working in the center. It is generally accepted, however, that there might be a book or two in the center that would not be characterized as a 'just right book." For example, in a cycle of nonfiction reading centers, the partners in the whale center might find mostly accessible texts in their center basket, although there might also be a book or two that the partners wouldn't be able to read conventionally. Instead they are taught to use the illustrations and photographs in these books to further their understandings of their topic.
- Partners read the texts in the reading center, and then together they think and talk about their ideas, questions, discoveries, theories, and so on.
Although there is no set recipe for how students have to read and talk in their reading centers, there are typical ways students tend to approach their work together. In many cases, the partners might begin by each reading a text by themselves and then meeting to talk about their texts. Sometimes they might decide to read a text, or portion of a text, together, depending, of course, on the type of text and their purpose. In a reading center session, a teacher would see partners either talking about their books, reading their books, or jotting ideas. In many classrooms, partners keep a folder in their reading center basket that contains their notes, plans, and other artifacts of their work in the reading center.
- The work that readers students do in their reading centers enables them to become a kind of "expert' about their particular topic.
During a reading center cycle the whole class works in similar kinds of reading centers, although partnerships tend to choose a specific reading center based on their own interests (and also the accessibility of the texts in the center). For example, when a first grade class is engaged in a cycle of author study reading centers, there are a variety of authors for students to pick. One partnership might pick Eric Carle because they love his books and they are interested in author/illustrators, while another partnership might select the Dav Pilkey center because they like his silly books. Other partners might be nudged by the teacher to choose the Joy Cowley center because the books in that reading center will be accessible to them. During a cycle of author study reading centers, the partnerships expect to read and reread the texts in their centers closely with the intention of becoming an expert on their author. This is true for all the types of reading center cycles, from nonfiction to fairy tales, from character study centers to mystery books centers, and anything else we might imagine.
- During reading centers, the teacher confers with reading center partnerships and actively supports and extends their work by teaching them strategies that would help or by offering ideas for how to push their thinking further.
During reading centers, the teacher tends to confer with partnerships in the same way as he or she would confer during private or regular partner reading time. The instruction during a reading center conference tends to provide reading strategies, to teach the habits of proficient readers, or to nudge the partners' talk and ideas to a higher level.
What teachers can do to support reading center talk is to teach students the characteristics of strong conversations throughout the day and to teach students a repertoire of things readers can talk about, without mandating what they must talk about.
Reading centers are an incredibly malleable structure in many ways. They provide opportunities for our students to apply the reading, thinking, and talking skills and strategies they are learning in ways that closely match the reading work grown-up readers do in and around text.
This excerpt is from a forthcoming book by Kathy Collins, to be published by Stenhouse Publishers. All rights reserved by Kathy Collins and Stenhouse Publishers.
|
About
E-Guides (pdf)