We will monitor the children's center work on a daily basis by observing and discussing their work with them. Eventually, your child will begin maintaining a written record of the centers that he or she chooses to visit each day. This written record is called a “contract.”

A “contract” is an accountability tool that documents children's interests and accomplishments as they are working in self-directed learning centers. You can use the contract as a guide for discussion with your child; the discussion may include completed center tasks, classmates with whom he or she worked, or the importance of responsible student behavior while working in the centers. When the contract comes home at the end of each thematic unit, please review it to see if your child has visited a variety of centers as well as completed a substantial amount of the required tasks that appear on the contract. The completed tasks will be acknowledged with a red stamp. The goal is to have each student work in as many different centers as possible, and to complete a majority of the tasks. Center tasks will change with each new thematic unit.

Following center time, two students will share their Center Story with the class. In an effort to strengthen storytelling skills, the children will identify their center, partner, completed task(s), and interesting details. A Center Story might sound like this:  “I worked in the Construction Center with Mark. We built a school out of wooden blocks. The first one fell down, so we had to start over to build another one.” As we begin identifying story elements during Integrated Language Arts, Center Stories help to emphasize the characters, settings, events, and problems and solutions that appear in our spoken stories.