4 Reasons to Create a Writing Center

The writing center is hands down the most popular center in our classroom. Students come here not only during reading centers but discovery play and recess time. Here’s why it’s so popular in our classroom:

1. Students are able to write in a low risk setting

Sometimes writing can be stressful especially if you’ve been working hard on creating a book in Writers' Workshop. But the writing center ISN’T Writers' Workshop. Students come here to write simple sentences, create lists, or maybe even write a letter to their friend. There are fun, smelly markers to write with and writing is pure FUN. And we all know, when kids are having fun—they learn MORE.

2. Expose to new vocabulary and make real world connections with real, nonfiction pictures

We all know the primary classroom has SO much clipart. This is the perfect place to switch it up in your classroom and incorporate those real, nonfiction pictures in your classroom! Your students will love seeing and learning about the new monthly pictures at the beginning of the month. It doesn’t take much to impress them, swap out the old ones and there will be a line for who wants to go there on the 1st of each month I swear!

3. Little to no prep

Listen, I am a firm believer in working smarter not harder. I refuse to waste my afternoons making endless amount of copies or sitting in front of the TV mindless cutting out hours and hours of laminated centers that will only be used for a week. 

This writing center is basically zero prep and the gist of it stays the same ALL YEAR LONG. Which means you aren’t wasting instructional time going over new centers each Monday morning. Each month, swap out the vocabulary words and TA - DA a new center is born! 

4. Super easy to differentiated

Kinders come into the school year at so many different levels. This is by far the easiest center to differentiate by just giving students different writing paper. They can do something as simple as copying vocabulary words to create a list, using a sentence stem and a vocabulary word to create a sentence, writing full-blown stories or even creating a fun letter/postcard to a friend! Plus kids love options, so they’ll love being able to choose what they want to do each day.