Literacy Twist on "BUILD"

Okay, so shortly after Christmas I noticed that my smart little kiddos were getting done with their literacy centers rather quickly and moving on to play their tech game. They were playing their game (...or getting a little off task) for like 40 minutes of the entire hour for our center time. It wasn't that they weren't doing their work correctly, they were actually doing a great job, I guess they just needed some harder work or more work. SOOOO, I'm sure several of you have seen "BUILD" right? If not, I found the idea from Mrs. Thompson at Adventures In Teaching, you should definitely hop on over and take a look at that. BUILD is basically like "Daily 5" for literacy but it is all math based. I use the BUILD system for my enrichment group...they LOVE it!

Anyway, after pondering for several days about my literacy center issue, I came to this conclusion. I can't necessarily make my center game much harder because there are only a select few of my students who would do well, and that's obviously not what I want. So, I decided to go the "more work" route. I had a random thought one day to try and put a literacy twist on BUILD since my kids loved it so much, and ta da...I came up with WORDS...duh right??? So here is how it works in my classroom...my kids do their regular center work first and as soon as they finish they get whatever WORDS basket that is assigned to their group. From this basket they have to complete a very easy worksheet that deals very explicitly on some kind of reading skill...I use the worksheets that come from our reading series. Then there is some sort of literacy based game in the basket they can play until the last 20 minutes of center time. When this time rolls around, I ding a little bell, they clean up, and go play their tech game. It has taken them about 2 weeks to remember what to do and get the hang of things, but they are adjusting well. Hope all of this makes sense...maybe it will be something you can use!

W-Writing Words

O-Other Word Stuff 

(I usually put a game or activity that works on a skill my kids might be struggling with or need extra practice with)

R-Reading Words

D-Doing Word Work

S- Sight Word Stuff