Do you have a writing center that is impossible to keep organized? Where there are papers everywhere, pencils scattered on the floor, and your students can’t find anything? In this blog, we’re talking about organizing a writing center so it’s not a hot mess.
Organizing A Writing Center
It’s the worst when your writing center is spilling out onto the rest of your classroom. There are a lot of working parts for a writing center, and so staying organized will help your students write comfortably, and it’ll help your sanity at the end of center time when you don’t have to try to figure out where your writing center is in the midst of chaos. Organizing a writing center isn’t as hard as it seems, you just have to give everything a home.
Organizing Your Writing Utensils
There are a lot of moving pieces for your literacy stations. Organizing a writing center just means you need to give each writing tool a home.
Let’s start with writing utensils. These pencil caddies are perfect for all the tools your students will use at your writing center. There is plenty of room for pencils, crayons, scissors, glue, etc. Plus, they’re really durable. These will last you for years.
Here’s a tip to think about when you’re organizing a writing center in your classroom. Do not (and I mean it) put every fun writing utensil out on the first day until you have gone over your expectations on how to use them. It’s one thing to put out pencils and crayons at first, but if you add markers, gel pens, glue, and scissors without teaching your students how to use them as tools, you’ll have a bigger mess on your hands.
Tip #2: At the beginning of the year, add a LOT of pencils to your writing center caddy. If you have four students at your writing center, put 20 pencils out for them. Kiddos break pencils a lot. It can be distracting so make sure you have extras in place.
Organizing Your Writing Activities
Let’s move onto the “meat” of your writing center. That’s the writing activities themselves. You’re looking at two different ways to organize a writing center activity. This week’s writing activities, and the assignments you’ve made for future weeks.
This Week’s Writing Activities
Let’s start with the current writing center activities. These are the tasks your students are going to do this week. You’ll want more than one activity, so they have a choice.
At the beginning of the year, you’ll only have a few, but when you’re ready, a rolling cart like this would be an excellent way for your students to find the writing activities you’re providing.
If you have a small classroom and need your students to do their writing center supplies at their desk, these tubs are great for storing writing activities. They’re the perfect size for younger students to carry to their writing area.
Next Week’s Writing Activities
Throughout the years, I’ve really tried to streamline the work I put into my centers. One of the ways I do this is by working a few weeks ahead. If you were to photocopy and organize your future writing center activities in a set of trays like this one, you’ll see that it drastically cuts the time you’ll need to set up a writing center in your classroom each week.
Make sure you keep this in a cabinet or somewhere away from your writing center. You’d hate for all your hard work to be undone because your students confused next week’s work for this week’s writing tasks.
Organizing Your Student Devices
Ideally, we want our students to learn to write with a pencil and paper. But it’s important for us to teach our kiddos how to write on a device as well. Using your iPads or Chromebooks as a writing tool will not only help your students practice their writing, but it will offer engaging activities your students will be excited to try
Organizing your devices at your writing center is easy. Just make sure that you’re choosing a safe place for them to stay so they don’t fall off the table and break. If you have 1-1 devices, your students can bring their iPads with them to your writing center. If not, you can easily stack a set of 4 devices right on the table for your students to use.
I hope these tips for organizing a writing center in your classroom helped you think through where you can keep your writing supplies and tools. Remember, if you give everything a place in your classroom, you’ll cut out that chaos and have a functional writing center.
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