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Running head: LEARNING CENTER FOR PRIMARY CLASSROOM Learning Center for Primary Classroom April 23, 2009 Learning Center for Primary Classroom Introduction Educators often face challenges on how to provide effective instruction for children with diverse needs in special and general education settings. Although learning centers are relatively seldom used nowadays due to various limitations (for example, physical space restrictions, etc. ), the important of using learning centers for primary classrooms cannot be underestimated. With this in mind, the present research paper is aimed to provide instructions and recommendations on how to design a learning center for a primary classroom. The paper provides insight into the process of designing, such as choosing an appropriate focus for the learning center, designing the physical setting for the learning area, and dwells on several activities which children may engage in at the learning center. Designing Learning Center for Primary Classroom Learning center is an effective organizational method that can be used to provide children with diverse needs in general and special education establishments. These centers can be effectively used to provide children with practice, small-group instruction or various review activities along with the increased active engagement of children in learning process.
Educators, therefore, should have enough knowledge to design and implement learning centers into practice, dealing with the basic issues concerning how to design and deliver effective interest learning center activities for primary classroom. Teachers often experience problems in effectively teaching the curriculum and the content that needs to be taught. Sometimes there are tasks and classroom activities where children deal with material they already know, while sometimes they cannot understand the content but the educator needs to move on. According to Kortering & Brazil (2002), approximately fifty percent of the students with learning disabilities find classroom tasks boring, and approximately 18 per cent consider classroom tasks to be difficult to understand. As the researchers asked students concerning potential changes they might consider useful, the vast majority of them were emphasizing on few similar aspects. According to students, the teachers should consider making classroom activities and tasks to be more interesting and exciting.
Most of them agreed that teachers should make boring activities more interesting, and offer more hands-on classroom activities. Also, they stated that teachers should provide them more individualized help tailored to students specific learning needs, and to avoid excessive use of boring bookwork, but use more experiments instead (Alexander, 1998). The teachers were also expected to explain difficult subjects and things better, using an easier language, to break it down for children and teach children focusing on their peculiar needs rather than explaining the subject in sophisticated language. It is a common knowledge that all children are different, and some of them need obviously more time to learn and practice new material, while other children can learn easier and can apply the new material and content quickly. However, in the vast majority of cases educators claim they have no enough time to address childrens needs, and in some cases the teachers experience difficulties in choosing the best way of dealing with such children. Swanson (1999) also notes that irrespective of the general instruction model used by teachers in classrooms, there are few instructional components that might be very effective, namely: enhancing practice and review, creating small-group instruction in order to enhance children-teacher interaction, constructing more effective dialogue with children concerning content- and process-related aspects of classroom activities and classroom tasks, controlling the level of difficulty or processing demands of a classroom tasks, to mention a few (Jones & Reynolds, 1992).
However, it should be taken into consideration that the educators often face problems on how to fit these instructional aspects (such as classroom practice opportunities for children with diverse needs, etc. ) while being confronted with a relatively wide range or learning levels and rates of children within one classroom and lack of time for instruction. Therefore, it becomes obvious that one of the effective ways for educators to address diverse needs of children in classroom is to design and implement interest learning centers able to provide all necessary instructional extensions for children, irrespective of the type of learner they belong to. In other words, if applied to the theme of the present research paper, it means that while designing and implementing learning centers for primary classroom, the educators should address four major groups of children in diverse classrooms: Children who had no obvious difficulties with understanding the content of the lessons or any other classroom tasks/ activities and are completely ready to continue assimilating new material and moving on to the next level of content; Children who feel that the teachers methods are tailored to their needs, whether it relates to the educators way of presentation, or classroom activities pace and practice; Children who have difficulties with understanding new content and need more time or practice with it; Children who have obvious difficulties with new content and need significantly more practice and time to understand new material; The abovementioned four groups of children can also characterize either a general education establishment where children with disabilities are supposed to receive content instruction, or a self-contained special education establishment. Also, whether the number of children in the classroom is four, twelve, twenty five of thirty two children, the teachers often have serious problems with how to design and maintain effective diversification of practice and classroom instruction to address special needs of all children in the group. These instructional changes and arrangements are obviously important irrespective of the number of adults in the classroom (co-teachers, para-educators, to mention a few) (Scruggs & Mastropieri, 1992). Therefore, designing learning center for primary classrooms can be very effective tool enabling teachers to individualize classroom practice for different group of children with varying learning needs in any given educational establishment.
In this respect, learning center for primary classroom should embrace a wide range of activities addressing the needs of individual children or small groups of children. The learning center, therefore, should be a physical placement in the classroom containing directions for children to complete activities tailored to their specific needs, and appropriate materials or, in case it is necessary, appropriate monitoring and assessment tools. While designing a learning center for a primary classroom, the educator should also take into consideration the fact that learning center activities, tailored to unique needs of children, should be designed at the corresponding challenge level for each child. At the same time, these individualized classroom activities do not mean that the teacher should design individual set of tasks of activities for each individual child. Instead, learning center for a primary classroom should be provide few sets of activities, different for each group of children, and placing emphasis on specific content or material addressing the childs needs (Schwartz & Pollishuke, 1991).
For example, effectively designed learning center for primary classroom will help children to be more actively involved in the learning processes, to acquire and practice new skills, to make children more proficient in the skills they already acquired during the traditional learning process and to help children to apply acquired skills or knowledge they already have to new situations or new scenarios. While designing learning centers, the teachers should acknowledge the necessity to be able to effectively differentiate practice opportunities and instruction for children with diverse learning needs. For example, as teachers are supposed to use learning centers for primary classroom as a differentiation design, they should obviously expand their teaching skills so to be able effectively deliver instruction through the utilization of whole-group formats as well as through designing special classroom activities in which children will be able to take part in classroom tasks that they can complete without teachers intervention. In order to design this specific set of activities for learning centers, the teachers should have clear vision of what they want the children to learn, which skills or knowledge children are supposed to get during the learning process (in other words, the teachers should have clear vision of learning outcomes) (Wasserman, 2000). Also, while designing the learning center for a primary classroom, the teacher should understand how the children are supposed to practice the material taught as well as what are childrens learning levels, In case the teacher has no understanding of these factors, for example, the educator has insufficient knowledge of what kind of knowledge the children will acquire after the learning process is over, or what group of children needs to practice the task, what kinds of classroom activities will help children to practice and apply the material learned, or any other questions, there is a relatively high probability that learning center will be designed in an inefficient way, and the children are likely to derive doubtful benefits from these activities. Therefore, it is very important to understand few crucial aspects of designing the learning center for a primary classroom, namely, how to these learning centers will effectively fit into teachers instruction, what are the major steps in designing learning centers, what kinds of activities the teacher should offer children depending on their learning needs, what do children have to know about learning centers, what teachers should do when children are at learning centers, to mention a few (Kortering & Brazil, 2002).
The answers to these important questions will serve as a basis for designing the learning center for a primary classroom, as they will provide with basic guidelines, recommendations and samples that can be effectively used in practice. Although designing and implementing learning centers may seem easy, it still requires a high level of knowledge and corresponding skills for teachers to make sure that all children acquire corresponding skills and get knowledge at the appropriate level, tailored to their unique learning needs. Learning centers should be designed taking into consideration the aspects of safety, space available, low noise levels (to reduce interference), as well as movement patterns). The centers should foresee group meeting areas (the place, where new activities and ideas are introduced, and the already known activities are reviewed). The group meeting areas can be used for introducing books, learning activities, class meetings, planning, developing thinking and language activities, singing, music, dancing, art and drama activities, counting, comparing, graphing, problem-solving, writing letters, sharing news, literacy related activities, to mention a few. Learning centers should be equipped by a chalkboard, a magnetic board, chart stand, record player and tape recorder, teacher chair, carpeted space, and, possibly, some rhythm instruments or any other equipment the teacher may find necessary and useful for effective learning.
Reading areas in learning centers can be used to supplement standard library resource center. In this area children will have access to their favorite books, stories, poetry, information, or any other specific literature they may find interesting. The reading areas should also contain a collection of the child-authored books. The teachers will read childrens literature from the book center (or may consider tape-recording their story time readings to provide children the opportunity to listen to the stories again, when necessary). In such a way, the reading area will encourage children to read, thus enhancing their reading and literacy-related skills. The educators can use the following activities: reading and rereading childrens favorite stories or books, discussing and answering questions, retelling stories, and role play characters, to mention a few.
Among the materials that should be kept in the reading areas in learning center, can be class-made books, big books with tapes, a selection of childrens literature (also non-fiction or informational literature), class news board, poems and songs, resource or research books embracing a number of topics (e. g. , related to projects, themes, seasons, field trips, to mention a few), calendar, helper charts, graphs, propositions for role playing, name tags, tape player, individual tapes, cassettes, film strips, etc. Some other areas in learning centers for a primary classroom may include but not limited to writing, drawing, publishing, art, painting and exploration areas. For example, in writing, drawing and publishing...
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Research essay sample on Running Head Learning Center For Primary Part 1
