A station somewhat similar to the Class Story is the Class Journal. This one is different because each student is writing their own piece within the journal instead of all students adding onto one story. I saw this idea on Pinterest and decided to recreate it to incorporate into stations. I have students add their name and the date so that when other students pick up the journal to read through it, they know who the author was for the piece they are reading. Here are the topics I have available:
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The Class Story is usually hilarious. One student starts the story and the next student that comes along keeps it going. This can happen as few as 7 (just a limit I made up) or as many as they want. We usually just say until the class can agree that the story has ended. I keep blank copies of the Class Story paper in the pocket inside the notebook. Then I have dividers for my different classes so they can keep their own story going and not mix it with other blocks. The Class Story paper was found on Super Teacher Worksheets, but I haven't seen it on there in a while. It just says Class Story at the top with a place for their name and what number they are (as in the number in the story sequence). We keep this folder in the Writing Station where students can put writing they are proud of. Then, anyone can pick it up and read through it while they are at the Writing Station. Somewhat surprisingly, they love this. We always staple the finished class stories like a book and put them into the folder on the inside pockets. This allows students from other classes to read their work as well.
One day I had a student ask me if she could type the class story during her Writing Station time. My first thought was "No, you need to write" and then I thought again. Why not?! Why not spend the Writing Station time practicing typing something authentic that her and her classmates had written. So that became a thing every now and then and I am totally okay with that. I like to have several options going at each station, but especially at the Writing Station. My hope for the Writing Station is that it is always creative and sparking new ideas. I feel like providing options and continually updating those options is helpful for brainstorming. One way I like to aid in brainstorming is the Journal Jar. This is full of a bunch of randomness...from magazine pictures to Happy Meal toys. Here is some of the randomness: I try to update it every time I clean out my daughter's toys. One way to use the jar is just to allow students to dig in and find one thing to write about. Another way is a class favorite. I put a number on the outside of the jar. I change this number often so it's always fresh. Whatever number is on the outside of the jar is how many items they can pull out. Once they have pulled the right number of items out of the jar, they write the number and their items at the top of their page. This helps them to remember if they don't get finished with their writing in one sitting. Whatever order they decide on when they write the items at the top of their paper is the order the items should appear in the story. So in the picture below, the jar says 4 and those 4 items would appear in the story in that order: mansion, spider, smurf, eyeball. They usually love these stories because they end up being pretty ridiculous!
Cloze Planet is a website that I pay to subscribe to ($39.99/year) and I really get a lot of use out of. It has a lot of materials that can be made into stations instead of just a website full of nothing but worksheets. There are quite a few freebies and those change quite often. A couple of uses: I have made several of their plot jumbles. These are pretty hard but totally do-able. It seems to work best with a partner to read it with and discuss their options. You print them front to back and fold like a book and then fill in the missing pieces of the story using the corresponding cards. For organization purposes, I marked each jumble and cards with a symbol or sticker so that it was easy to tell which cards went with which "book". I have also used several of their fluency or word work options. For this one, there are missing letters throughout the paragraph. The students have to come up with the word based on the surrounding context and then determine which letters are missing. I laminated them and put the answers on the back for a self-check option.
NOTE: For Author's Purpose, the STAAR asks about Persuade, Inform, Entertain (PIE) about 1% of the time. The way STAAR assesses Author's Purpose is through Fig19D, making inferences. So, while these are good quick, review stations...they CANNOT be all that is covered with Author's Purpose. It has to be so much deeper! A few of the many ways STAAR asks about Author's Purpose: The author included ___ most likely to... What is the author suggesting in lines __ to __? The author informs the reader about ___ mainly by... Super simple station! These could easily be used in Intervention Groups as well. This first one was a free download (here) that is super simple, but it got the discussion going and was good to put in a station as a quick review. I made several sets on card stock and put the answer key in a file folder for easy self-check. This next station was also a free download (here) and it is so good! It comes with ideas for other ways the cards could be used (which I glued into my folder so I wouldn't forget), but for now, I used these as a station. The answer sheet comes with it and again, I glued the answers into the folder. One other thing I added to this station are the anchor charts seen below. I stapled these together like a book and the students have been using the book to double check their answers. I found the charts here.
I love using WebQuests as a station! I love it because the kids love it. I usually put this at a table with the laptops set out and then allow the students to choose the WebQuest to work on. I bookmark the websites on the laptops for easy access.
Here are some that my students have really liked: 1. Solar System ($1.50) 2. Earthquakes using National Geographic (free) 3. Extinct Animals ($1.25) 4. Glaciers ($1.50) 5. Wacky Animal Adaptations ($1.00) 6. U.S. Landmarks (free) 7. Ellis Island (free) 8. Dinosaurs (free) 9. Mammals ($7.00 for a bundle of 6 WebQuests) I know that pictures are a great way to practice main idea and so I tried to incorporate that into a station for continued review and practice. I took lots of photographs from magazines and cut off the captions. The captions were then glued to the back. I did this same thing with pieces or small sections of articles, except for these I cut of the subtitle or heading. Students look only at the front side and write down what they think a good caption or subtitle/heading would be. Then the can flip it over and see what the real one says. The answer sheet is attached below.
So this station looks like a hot mess. BUT, this has actually worked so well! We noticed a need for alphabetical order practice and thought stations would be the best place for that practice. The introduction was whole group so we could teach this crazy strategy. Basically, we used lists of words that had the same beginning (one letter or a couple of letters). We had the students mark out the letters that were the same and then the first letters that were different were assigned a number based on where the fell in the alphabet (letter-number charts were provided). Then they could look at the numbers and the lowest number went into the list first. Answer sheet and lists are attached below.
We were needing some practice and work with reading for detail when it came to charts and graphs (and captions, etc). This became a station for further practice. I copied the charts and graphs from a bunch of different books and activities I had and put them all onto a file folder. Then, I made up questions that went with each one. Nothing fancy, but it worked! |
Ideas and resourcesLiteracy Stations can come in many forms. Whatever that form may be, they should always be tied to content. ArchivesCategories
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