Tiered Literacy Center Activities

Tiered learning centers offer an effective way to customize literacy instruction. With planning and creativity, your center activities will challenge students and promote independence. When activities in centers are tiered, students perform the same basic task, but the depth is adjusted typically at the beginning, intermediate and advanced levels. This allows for differentiated instruction. Contrary to the "one size fits all" approach, differentiated instruction adapts instruction to the varied needs of the student population according to ability levels and learning styles. It accommodates cultural and linguistic diversity. Each center should support a learning objective for each tier and allow students to work independently. Students rotate to centers in groups based on reading level.

  1. Word Play

    • Students work with spelling words or challenge words and perform word sorts, including sorting words into nouns, adjectives and verbs or categorizing them according to vowel patterns. They create words in a variety of ways. For example, have two sets of cards, one set showing a consonant blend and the other showing the other half of the words. Students will combine the two sets to create words such as "sn" and "ow" creates snow. This can also be used for rhymes and such other purposes as compound word concentration, sight word bingo, finding certain words in various contexts, unscrambling words with magnetic letters, or rainbow writing words in three colors.

    Comprehension

    • Activities to support reading comprehension involve independent or small group work. Students respond to questions, create their own questions or find specific inferences in the story to further their understanding. Model effective questioning techniques and supply students with examples. Instead of responding to a reading selection in writing, they can create story maps that identify the characters, setting, problem and solution in a picture format. Board games that emphasize such skills as main idea, cause and effect, and summary are other another fun option.

    Fluency

    • Repeated reading of a passage at the appropriate level can increase fluency or reading at a smooth pace in a conversational tone. Students work in pairs to time and record each other on tape recorders. Centers can also include emotion or punctuation cards by which students read a selection, but vary their tone of voice depending on the emotion stated on the card.

    Writing

    • Writing prompts should be varied so students get experience writing from a variety of perspectives and styles, including letter writing. They can also rewrite a passage that contains such overused words as good, bad, nice and fun to include more descriptive words. The overused words can go to the graveyard. To strengthen word choice, they can create their own thesaurus. Have them create silly sentences or a story with vocabulary words for a change of pace.

    Organization

    • Students can have files at the centers in which they pull from activities geared toward their abilities, which can be color coded for easy reference. Some websites track student progress for you and recommend book titles and activities that correspond to the student's reading level. Activities should be changed frequently and reviewed for correspondence to learning goals and success in meeting those goals.

    Benefits

    • The use of tiered literacy centers provides students with an opportunity to practice skills across reading, listening and writing activities. Students are more apt to be challenged and engaged, which also helps reduce behavior issues. Tiered centers accommodate all learning styles and modalities, and allow students to experience learning at their readiness level. This helps them to become active, independent learners.