Literacy Work Stations: Station Rotation

Happy Wednesday Friends.
Spring Break is half over for me. :( I suppose I should look on the bright side though....for some of you Spring Break is COMPLETELY over.

Today I thought I would share with you how I rotate students through my Literacy Work Stations.

First off, I use Debbie Diller's model of stations from her book Literacy Work Stations: Making Centers Work. It sells at Amazon for about $18. ( 3-6 teachers there is also a book for your grade level too if you are interested.)

 

A few summers ago, I went in search of something that would help me during our ELA block. I did not like how I utilized that time and I didn't feel like the center time I had inside my head was actually being done in practice. At the time we split our three 2nd grade classes by Tiers for reading. I always had the lowest tier of kids. But we began talking about changing that and keeping our homeroom groups regardless of reading ability. I knew I needed to do something different.

 

Enter Debbie's book. ( I refer to her as Debbie as IF I had the good fortune to know her personally. Haha!) I borrowed a copy from the library first because I wasn't sure I would like it. 2 chapters in, I ordered my own copy. I shared it with the other K-2 teachers in my building and now most of us use stations at some point during our ELA block. This book is my teaching bible.

 

 

Our ELA chunk of time is from 8:45- 10:50. During this time we do comprehension, writing, spelling, and stations. Stations take up about 50 minutes of that time. And I do two rotations during that 25 minute period of time. This is the time I meet with small groups. I also have a Title 1 Para pro who works with small groups during that time. ( I also have other times that Title 1 works with some of my students. We are very blessed at my school.)

In the book it gives you some examples of other teachers station boards. When I made mine I wanted something that I could use year to year and that I could easily rearrange students during the year if I needed to.

What I came up with were 5 pieces of poster board ( I happened to use different colors, but the colors don't really mean anything specific). Each poster board represents a different day of the week. We do stations every day.

( Please ignore the glare and the fact that Monday is blank. I'll get to that in a minute.)

Each side has all of our stations listed out and then with a number for which station it is ( either station #1 or #2 since we do 2 stations.) 


This is what it used to look like. ( If you recall, one of my Spring Break goals was to update these since I haven't in over 2 years!) This is for the 2nd set of Stations because there is a number 2 by every one.

This is what it looks like now that I updated the board. Next to each station I put the students pictures so they know which station to go to. Everything is held on with tape so I can easily rearrange the pictures if I need to. ( This is the 4th time this year I have moved them around.)

So that is how I manage who goes to which station and when. The kids know to check that the station board is out in the morning. They flip it over when the bell signals for Station 2. It has worked out really well for me for 3 years now, so I am pretty sure I will keep this system as long as I do stations in my room. In the future I will share a little about how the kiddos are grouped and I will share more about each station and what they do at it.

Enjoy your evening friends. I will be back on Friday for the linky parties. :)