If you’re not familiar with what centers are, they are activities in different areas of the classroom that small groups of students (or independently) complete.  When there are multiple centers in the classroom, students might rotate through them as well.  When most people think of centers, they think that they are only implemented in elementary-aged classrooms, but this is not true.  Keep reading to find out the benefits of using centers in older classrooms and how to get started! 

What are the key benefits of using centers in a high school special education classroom? How do they support student learning and engagement?

The benefits include students being able to practice a skill that was previously taught (or maybe it’s an IEP goal).  Many of our students benefit from repetition, and doing centers is a great way to incorporate repetitive practice.  Students also have the chance to practice their independence which is really important in the high school setting as well as the opportunity to get hands-on learning.  Students build a sense of responsibility and these types of skills are transferable to the workplace.  Doing an activity in a “centers” format is fun and different from the typical teacher lecture.

Another benefit of doing centers is students have the opportunity to work in small groups, which is also another transferable skill for the workplace, but this really helps out the teacher especially if you are short-staffed.  At the high school/transition level I’ve even paired higher-level students to help out some of my lower-level students.  Once again, students are getting to work together in a different way creating a great opportunity for skills that will transfer to the workplace.

Examples of how centers can be effectively implemented in a high school setting for special education students

I utilize many different types of activities for centers.  This includes digital activities like Boom Cards, task cards, file folders, worksheets, and task boxes.  Sometimes I’ll have students focus on one type of activity, for example, file folders) for all of the centers with different skills practiced at each center.  Other times I might have a different type of activity at each center, so Boom Cards, task cards, and file folders for example [below is an example of the different types of activities].  It is nice to change it up sometimes, but all of these decisions will be dependent on which students are participating in centers, what their levels are, what their preferred learning methods are, and so on.

How to ensure that centers align with the individualized education programs students and how to support their specific goals and objectives:

Each year it’s going to look different depending on the IEP goals your students have.  While it’s not always possible to work on every student’s goals in my group lessons – I try my best to incorporate students’ IEP goals into centers when possible – especially if there’s a skill that many students have a goal for.  Additional activities like independent work and centers give the opportunity for the students to practice these skills in a different setting which will make the skills more transferable.

In a high school setting, where students may have different schedules and abilities, how do you manage and ensure that all students have access to centers and meaningful learning opportunities?

If you’re a teacher, you know that schedules are a huge headache. Each student has different services or times they are in the classroom and it feels almost impossible to teach one lesson to every student.  For this reason, I usually schedule these types of activities several times throughout the week so that everyone eventually has the opportunity to participate in a lesson (or in this case centers).

Check out this blog post that talks about how I work on students’ varying IEP goals each week and how I implement them into the schedule – this will help with a similar take on scheduling centers.

What are some potential challenges or obstacles you might face when implementing centers in a high school environment, and how can you overcome them?

The biggest challenge aside from schedules would be accommodating the different abilities and levels of all of your students.  There are a variety of ways to overcome this, depending on your class, you might be able to pair students of similar abilities together, or as I had mentioned earlier, maybe you have your higher-level students help out lower-level students, or you can offer choices of different activities/skills to work on within each ability levels.

Another challenge is finding the space to create several small groups throughout the classroom. While it’s ideal to use tables to have small groups work at – if you don’t have multiple tables in your classroom, you can have students push their desks together to form little groups, or you can even have some groups go outside if you have areas such as lunch tables to have students work at.

Advice for those who are considering incorporating centers into their high school classrooms and where to start:

It might seem like a daunting task to set up – but remember this is a time to focus on practicing skills that have already been taught –  you can reuse lesson materials by just making a few extra copies.  Aside from that, you’ll want to build up your library of resources such as task cards, task boxes and so on that you can use for more hands-on learning opportunities.  This will take time, but once you’ve got a good number of resources to pull from, it will be easy peasy in the future!

Here are some money-saving bundles that contain multiple subjects for the whole year to help you get started:

Thanks for reading!

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