Create a comfortable atmosphere for reading. Set up large lounging pillows and comfortable chairs. Add small rocking chairs if your budget allows. Provide a basket full of stuffed animals. Children love to snuggle with a favorite stuffed animal while they read.
Stock the center with books. Display them in a bookshelf or in baskets. Provide books appropriate for your students' reading levels. Include storybooks for comfort reading, as well as books related to the theme of your weekly lessons. Ask students to bring in their own books to keep in the reading center for the year.
Stock the center with headphones and books on CD or tape. Allow students to listen to a book and encourage them to read along with the narrator.
Set up an efficient area for writing. Provide a real desk or an office desk with a comfortable chair and task lighting.
Stock the writing center with basic supplies. Provide pencils, pencil sharpeners, erasers, lined paper, blank paper and dictionaries.
Stock the writing center with fun supplies. Provide stationery, postcards, markers, gel pens and stencils.
Provide assignments. Instruct students to write their names, to write stories and to write out their spelling words.
Reward students with fun writing. Allow students to write out a postcard or a letter to someone after completing an assignment.
Set up a colorful alphabet center at a desk or work table.
Provide basic alphabet tools. Post alphabet cards so students can see what the letters look like.
Stock the center with hands-on alphabet tools. Provide a magnetic board with magnetic alphabet letters, ABC stencils, alphabet puzzles, alphabet games and small blocks or Scrabble pieces with letters on them. Encourage students to practice making words.