Stations are not just for elementary classrooms! They are an excellent way to increase engagement in the secondary ELA classroom.
My favorite ways to included stations:
Mentor Text Stations
Grammar Stations
Vocabulary Stations
Peer Editing Stations
Carousel Brainstorming Stations
Gallery Walk Stations
Mentor Text Stations
I love using mentor texts, especially before a major writing unit. I find a piece of literature that employs a similar writing style or mode of writing; a writing I want my students to emulate within their own work. We will then explore this mentor text within stations that pose guiding questions. I want students to think deeply about an author’s craft, and I love when these examples can come from quality literature. Together we will look at this piece of writing for all of the critical elements I want my students to craft into their own writing piece. This can vary depending on our writing purpose, but I often look at the development and/or organization, tone and mood, purpose, theme, word choice, “showing VS telling”, dialogue, foreshadowing, irony and the suspense it can create, character development, etc.
Another approach to using mentor text stations is to have students focus on the different sections of the essay within each station. These stations will have students looking at quality examples for each element of this essay while providing meaningful and active discussion opportunities. Students can focus on the introduction, the thesis, the body paragraphs, a counter-argument paragraph where applicable, the conclusion, etc. I find quality examples from published pieces, or even previous student examples, for students to model and emulate.
Grammar Stations
I use a mentor texts in my grammar stations as well. After teaching compound or complex sentences, I will pull sentences from a popular novel to ask students how the author has crafted this/these sentences with correct mechanics. I have always take an issue with the D.O.L (Daily Oral Language) version of sentence and grammar instruction. With this methodology, students will stare at incorrect and poorly written sentences in an attempt to fix them. I have to wonder what message they are really taking away from this experience when most of the lesson requires students to explore poor writing examples. Instead, students can spend meaningful time analyzing an author’s craft, and have rich discussions about what DOES work in a sentence or short passage. For example, when I teach FANBOYS for adding commas into compound sentences, I host FANBOYS stations in my classroom. Students will travel to each one of the FANBOYS words to read quality mentor text examples, and then craft their own sentences. I do the very same thing when I teach complex sentences with the AAAWWUBBIS words. This can really be done with any grammar/sentence structure skill. Students enjoy these activities far more than sentence diagramming, but their conversations at these stations shows the same level (or greater) of understanding. They are moving, discussing and engaged!
Vocabulary Stations for “The Most Dangerous Game”
Vocabulary Stations
After I teach my students a context clues lesson, I love having my students explore vocabulary stations. Before reading a text, I will select a few of the words that I know my students will need support with as they read. In years past, I would assign a worksheet asking students to look up the definitions of the words. This seat work was lackluster and downright boring. Bring in the stations! I simply take these words and create a station for each one. At each station, students will look at that word in context. (I copy the paragraph directly from the text to the station worksheet.) Then, students work together to create meaning of this word using the context clues they were taught in the lesson. This means that students are moving and collaborating, but more importantly, they are practicing the real life skill of using context clues to make meaning of new words.
Peer Feedback Stations
I break these stations down just like I do my mentor text stations for writing. At each station I ask guiding questions, so students can fully analyze a peer’s writing. In the introduction station, I will ask students to look at the hook statement and evaluate its effectiveness. They might also analyze the thesis statement in that station. I will ask students to identify the argument, the “road map” created by the thesis, etc. These stations get students up and moving while discussing the elements of a great essay. They can provided meaningful feedback for their peer while exploring, with great depth, what they should include in their own writing. I have found great success with these stations!
Carousel Brainstorming Stations
This is a whole class, collaborative, brainstorming session. To prepare for this discussion, I take all of the desks and push them out into a large circle, leaving a large space in the middle of the classroom. I then take a massive piece of chart paper and lay this inside that large open space. As students enter the classroom, they each pick a Flair Pen or Sharpie. (I know that I am not the only teacher who has a massive selection of each, but a marker would work as well!) Then, I write “arguable topics” in the center of this chart paper. I ask students to use their writing utensil to write down as many ideas as they can. I explain that the goal of this exercise is to fill this large piece of paper with words, connections, lines, pictures, mind-maps, and lists. As an added incentive, I tell my students that the class with the most detailed and comprehensive brainstorming chart will get a reward the following day- this, as you may imagine, has been extremely effective!
Grab this freebie here!
Students can chat with their neighbors, add on to another topic idea, discuss with me, and/or draw a picture or visual representations. I ask them to draw large lines to connect similar ideas/issues/topics. I encourage them to mind-map similar ideas or issues. They may write down as many sides to an issue as they can find! They also have free access to their devices so they can research as needed. I often find that students’ passions begin to unfold right on this very paper. Conversations are lively and engaged, and all students feel safety in participating, as they need not share verbally with the class. My artists make visual representations, my concrete thinkers make lists, my abstract thinkers make maps, my social butterflies discuss first and write second, my quiet introverts research and then write independently. Every student is engaged, and all students are creating and building topics!
My role during this brainstorm is to facilitate conversations, either as a whole class, or with small groups as they collaborate. As all good teachers do on occasion, I may guide the topics as needed, or lead students into narrowing a topic further as they continue to brainstorm on the topics.
When this chart paper is full of student-generated ideas, we hang these in the classroom (and hallway) for students. Students can then take a gallery walk of all chart paper brainstorms to find a topic/issue/idea that resonates uniquely with them.
The Exit Ticket: as students leave the class for the day (or then next day, as the gallery walk is most effective when all chart paper brainstorms are hanging), I ask them to fill out an exit ticket with their initial topic ideas based on our discussion and gallery walk. This will allow me the opportunity to see where my students are at within the topic selection process, as well as pair students for the second – most important – pre-writing activity!
Gallery Walk Stations
A gallery walk sets up a learning experience for students that allows them to move through the material much like they would in an art gallery. The material is displayed on the walls for students to look at, interact with, and collaborate on the material presented in the gallery. There are so many uses for a gallery walk in an educational setting. This can be used within a variety of lessons or applications, but I love it especially for introducing a new text because it gives students a chance to interact with the text before actually reading the story. They will be able to build background, and maybe more importantly, interest with the story they will read. I set my students off on this gallery walk with a stack of post-it notes and some peers to collaborate with as they work to make meaning from passages I select from a given text.
To set up the gallery walk, I will pull important passages from the text for a sneak peek into the plot, characterization, conflict, or even theme. I only give enough away to peek interest, however. Try to avoid the spoiler alerts! Then I create a guiding question that students can answer on their post-its as they move between the passages. A few basic questions I ask within many of my gallery walks are:
- Predict what is happening in this particular section of the text, or predict what might happen next in the text.
- State their opinion of the protagonist based on a revealing passage of text.
- Predict the author’s message based on a relevant section of text.
- Find connections between a previous text.
- Describe what a particular passage reveals about the time period within which the story was set.
Then I will try to find passages and questions that are more specific to the text itself (I don’t want to find myself in that same ‘rut’ situation!) For example, when I introduce To Kill a Mockingbird to my students, I select the passage below to ask the question: “Given what you know about the time period, what do you think the ‘ugly things’ are?”
The Passage: “There’s a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep ‘em all away from you. That’s never possible.”
Here are a couple more examples of specific questions based on the text I want to introduce:
