Motivate students to work on their fluency and comprehension with a small group activity that uses puppets. Begin by supplying several kinds of puppets, such as sock puppets, paper bag puppets or more advanced puppets if they are available. Explain to students that when they are working in this group, they must use a quiet voice. However, they are to choose a tone of voice for the puppet they are using. Students love trying a different sounding voice to read through various provided scripts.
Keep students engaged in center work with an exciting block building group. For this group, you can use blocks that snap together or wooden blocks. Use a permanent marker to write every letter of the alphabet onto the blocks. Make sure to create several blocks for more frequently used letters. Some blocks can remain blank to serve as the space between words or receive a single dot to serve as a period. In the beginning, students may work on building sight words. However, as they advance, they can try building entire sentences.
Give students an activity to get their imaginations going. Tell students that for this center, they will be inventing an animal as a group . Make sure to give students the necessary supplies, such as crayons, paper, glue and scissors. Emphasize that they must work quietly but as a team. Encourage students to draw on recently learned information about habitats and an animal's needs. When all of the students have had a chance to work at the center, ask them to share the new animals with the class. This group activity encourages students to continue working as the teacher meets with other students. It provides an excellent way to introduce various scientific concepts.
Incorporate math skills into a small group activity with the use of charts. Students should have supplies to form a graph. Explain to students that they should begin by figuring out what they might make a chart about and polling the class or whatever else they need to do to gather the information. For example, some students may want to create a chart about everyone's favorite ice cream flavor or about the various colors of backpacks in the room. Students enjoy this activity. It has many components and helps students develop problem-solving skills.