Learning Centers in the Middle School Classroom--Eek?!

As a Michigan teacher, I have a much more stringent evaluation this year than I did last year.  Part of that is to have a rubric goal, and two data goals.  My rubric goal was to challenge myself and include more differentiation in my classroom.  To achieve that, I'm going to start using centers/small groups in my 6th grade English classroom.  So...I've told the parents now that I'm going to start that this week.  Now that that week is upon us..

I'M FREAKING OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have my students broken down into four groups; but none are the same size.  My stronger groups are larger, numbering around 7-8 students and my struggling groups are about 4-5 students a piece.

My class periods are about 55 minutes each.  I'm thinking two cycles, 20 minutes, each class period, and working in centers two days/week.  Probably on Wednesday and Thursday while they're still relatively focused.

As of right now, my four stations will be:

1. Reading with me-here we'll work on comprehension and going deeper into reading; but this will not include the book we're working on as a class.  I need to keep everyone together for that...at least that's what I'm thinking right now (we'll work on our class novel on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays).  I have leveled passages that we'll be working on.

2. Metacognitive-my plan is for the students to work on developing metacogntivie strategies to help build their reading.  They'll focus on one trait/week.  The first week will be visualizing something we've read in class and drawing a picture of it.  They'll then share this with their group and discuss what aspects of the reading hit home with them as far as developing a picture.  Other metacognitive traits will include predicting, making connections, evaluating, inferring, monitoring, prior knowledge, purpose setting, questioning, responding emotionally, and retelling/summarizing (Kaplan's Metacognitive Awareness). 

3.  Vocabulary & Phonics-Vocabulary is the biggest indicator of success.  As of right now, I plan on using mind sketches to achieve vocabulary acquistion.  Furthermore, I have some students who are struggling with phonics...so that's a major concern for me.  I need to bring up this area, and then introduce vocabulary to those students.

4.  Writing-My students will be working on writing cohesive paragraphs using a Power Writing rubric.  The majority (thank God!) of my kiddos know what Power Writing is and understand it.  In my district, we had 3 feeder schools, and so if one student doesn't understand Power Writing, another student in their group will be able to explain it (it's not difficult if you're unfamiliar with it).  The first week we're focusing on organization, which will be with the Power Writing rubric.  

If you've actually made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read through my blog!  I'm going to start blogging more in order to help me think through these things.  Please, please, please leave me some feedback! 

Always,
Monica