How to Plan a Month of Centers in 10 Minutes | FREE Planning Template
Does center/station/independent work planning suck the life out of you? It’s a real problem for teachers, everywhere. One of those weekly things that you sit down to do, only to trash half of the work that your kids do…and then prep more work for them.
I can remember tossing a fit about this when I taught for the first few years. I thought it was insane that I was prepping all of this independent work for the kids to do each week, only for me to not have the time to keep up with it…and for the kids to not have the time to finish it all. When I complained, I was told:
The work should be purposeful, and always standards-aligned to what student data shows that they need.
If the kids are struggling to finish it all, then you need to differentiate each item so it is accessible, and maybe give some students different activities altogether.
You need to be providing feedback on this work to hold students accountable and ensure that you’re promoting growth.
So. I killed myself over trying to juggle all of these things and do them the ‘right way’.
By year three I was over it. So, I set out to find a way to simplify the process, and make the planning SUPER FAST. Today, I’m here to share the process with you!
Think of Centers in Three Categories
My centers fit into three categories: must be swapped out every week, must be swapped out once every 4-6 weeks, and can stay out all year.
If you can start swapping out the center activities that you use with activities that can last for weeks at a time, you can start eliminating all of that weekly prep from your to-do list!
But how can one center last for weeks at a time?
Start choosing activities for students that are more open-ended, or provide more options so they can be done more than once. Writing menus that last a month, word work activities that can be used over and over with different word lists, and reading response prompts that can be used with any book are all good for prepping once, and leaving out for longer periods of time. Even if a child has already done that word work activity before, they haven’t done it with this word list, so it feels fresh!
Keep Center Activities Similar Each Week
If you are using a ton of class time to teach and reteach directions and expectations each week for all of your new centers, you can essentially eliminate that part of your week by simply using the same types of activities each week. For example, I have a set of fluency activities that can be used with any book. I put all 6 activities out for about 6 weeks. Each time students go to the fluency center, they can choose their activity. I don’t police whether they do each activity once or not. I really don’t care. As long as they are doing one of the activities, they are practicing fluent reading.
When they’ve had a decent amount of time to work with those activities, I set out a new set of fluency activities. These are similar, but from a different pack. I don’t have to teach the directions or my expectations. I can seamlessly swap them out, and then forget about that part of my room for the next 6 weeks.
Students can write to persuade their class of the greatest invention ever made…and you don’t need to touch that center for a MONTH.
Plan a month of centers in minutes!
When I sit down to plan a new month of centers, this is exactly what I have going on in my room:
Center 1: Read to Self - This center never changes. It’s the same all year. No Prep.
Center 2: Listen to Reading - This center is online through Epic or RAZKids. It never changes. No prep.
Center 3: Word Work - This center changes every week, but the routines never do. I pull 4 pages from this pack and copy a class set each week. The students can choose which activity to complete with their weekly spelling words each time they go to this center. I keep a master set of the entire pack in my classroom so I can just pull four sheets from it each week.
Center 4: Fluency - I use one of my fluency center packs every 4-6 weeks, so I get these printed and prepped once and use them year after year. When it’s time to swap them out, I just pull out the next pack.
Center 5: Writing - I use a mix of projects, paragraph puzzles, and writing journals. Any one of these activities can last a full month, but you can put out more than one at a time to provide choice and make them last longer!
My reading response notebook system is taught once, and used for the ENTIRE YEAR. I love having one area that I literally don’t have to think about again, but the kids grow from!
As a freebie for you, I have a quick center planning template! This is digital, but you can export the PDF and print it to keep with your plans, or pass off to a parent volunteer to prep for you each month!
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