New Ideas for Literacy Stations

I have come to realize that my "thing" is literacy stations. I LOVE making literacy center activities. I LOVE doing guided reading groups. I LOVE seeing what my students need help with and I LOVE helping them with their particular skill they are struggling with or just need more emphasis on. First grade is so much fun! It is so fun to see them grow.  Anyway, right now for my literacy stations my students come in first thing in the morning and they complete one station (takes an average of 15-25 minutes per student--their challenging and I am scaffolding). After their one station they go onto read to self/partner. I am loving it... but I need more time with my guided reading groups. I enjoy making these literacy stations a bit of a challenge for my kiddos... but I would like them to be doing stations independently so I can meet with my guided reading groups more.

This is what I have come up with. I hope this may be able to somehow help you too.  I am still going to have students come in at 9:00 work on their literacy stations until 9:30.  We complete a whole group lesson and do this for about 40 minutes.  Then for the last 15 minutes of reading I send students to their stations.  These stations though will be ones they can do independently and stations that I do not have to change weekly.  I want stations like the Daily 5 intends for.

I am like the most confusing teacher ever right now? I want Daily 5 stations... I like a challenge... that is contradicting.  I want them to have a challenge in the morning: I want to scaffold students with those. But.... during the 2nd part of reading I want them working completely independently and choosing a station so I can pull students aside to meet. I have time later in the day to pull 2 groups.  I get to pull groups and we get to work quietly with no interruptions because it is read to self and read to partner. I do not want to do that to my kids in the morning too so I can pull more groups. We read a lot and they love to work independently.

Okay, I will stop rambling. I am going to implement this Monday! I hope it works... Oh, wait! How should I track this or should I let them just choose what they do each day and not keep track? I was thinking about laminated a strip for them.  Placing colors on the bins with the idfferent activities and then students put a check when they complete that color bin.  Then on Friday (just saying) they look at their chart and go to the color bin they have not yet been to... I think I may do that or else I will have students doing the same thing everyday!! (I have a few that would do that and I am sure you do too!

Alright... really... no more rambling! I found some AWESOME FREEBIES to help me transition into this new wave of literacy instruction.! I wanted to share because they are so great!

First, I went and observed a teacher today at another school.  Her students wrote their spelling words on strips and then glued them into a chain. It was so cute!

Here are the things from Tpt I found!

Character Writing Pages from Latoya Reed

Write the room from Alisa Barrett (this will be fun to do with sight words)

I will be going to wal-mart to buy stickers this weekend for this one! I have decided that this one is a FOR SURE!

Sticker Stories! How cool is this? Thank you, Sarah Paul

A Mini How-To Book: Thank you, Caitlin Kramer

A Never Ending Story... Some of my kids would love this one!

Thank you, Kelly Morgan

Mini-Book Writing and Rubrics

Tanya Dwyer

Connect 4 (Sorry for blurry pictures)

Thanks, Michele Smyth

Word Families:  I am thinking about putting a word family menu on the board. Students choose one and complete the form included in the pack below.

Word of the day template (This would be perfect for a sight word for the week... or for my higher ones I may have them look up a work in the dictionary and fill out the template) 

A Book Report Template

When students read a book they can fill out this template for their comprehension.

Alright! That's All I have for now! Let me know if you have any ideas for this! I am all open ears! Trying to do my best during my first year of teaching! :)