Breakdown of Each Center/Station

Hopefully you got the basis of what my classroom looks like and how it functions during centers/stations from my first post.  This post will focus on each of the stations that occur in my classroom.  One day, I'll post activities for each of these stations to make life just that much easier for you.  Check out a few FREEBIES below to add in your classroom. Enjoy!

Read to Self:  At this station, my students are required to stay at their seats to read.  If I catch them reading and engaged in their book, I give them a "Hooked on a Book" coupon {FREEBIE}, where the next time they are at the Read to Self station they can read anywhere in the room using pillows, stuffed animals, or the bean bag chair. They really strive for those coupons! One last thing you can incorporate if you want students to have a finished product at this station is a Reading Response Slip.  From this, they either tell me what they learned if it is a non-fiction book or give a brief summary of the story/chapters read. This gives them some responsibility during that station  for the last 5 minutes and the teacher a sense of whether they are actually reading during that time or not. I also make students stick to one book (this depends on grade level) so they can finish books and not start-stop-and never finish.

I kept a basket near my Teacher's table so I could quickly get up when my group was reading or working independently to pass the coupons out.  Students could choose to use them immediately, but often realized to wait because they would have more time the next time they were at Read to Self. 

Check out the Reading Response Slips HERE!

Writing: This station is very flexible in my classroom, just one requirement...to write!  I come up with a variety of activities for students to do here, and many times it is tied into our reading comprehension/response that we are working on during that week/unit.  For example, students may be asked to read 2 short stories/passages and write a paragraph to compare/contrast the two.  I have also allowed free writing, incorporated some grammar skills into their writing assignments, or even reading a variety of passages to identify the genre and why it fits there. 

Word Work: This station really changed from my second to third grade groups and students only visit this station once a week.  In second grade, students are working with stamps, magnetic letters, word families, spelling words, the list goes on and on! In third grade, since students had a good understanding of their phonics skills, I treated it more like a vocabulary station. Students would given an organizer {FREEBIE} to complete items such as the definition, in a sentence, part of speech, picture, & synonym/antonym of the word.  By asking students to do this, they are working on ABC order and guide words as well as what is asked on the organizer.  Check out my post on Vocabulary. 

Work with Teacher: At this station, I work with individual groups that are working on the same skill or reading at the same level.  Many times it will be focused on fluency practice, a specific standard/skill, comprehension practice, and reading strategies. Look out for a post soon in detail about lessons I have created and the order of them. 

Listening: This is another station that students only visit once a week.  Most of this is done at the computer now that our reading series does not provide a CD for each of the stories from our reading series. On the computer they are completing tasks from a website portal called My Big Campus.  Students are to complete games, activities, quizzes, etc. through this program based on the standards we are working on that week/unit. My class also piloting a classroom set of tablets, so I integrated those into this station too. 

Give this a chance, especially if you are not planning a lot of time for them. In a few months, my students could complete this independently, quickly, & it would be quality work. 

*Work with Teacher (Additional Teacher): In our school, Title I teachers are licensed teachers so I respected their teaching ability and they created their own lessons.  We would co-teach on Mondays during the station time to introduce the learning target for that week.  We would also meet at least once a week to discuss what the groups needed to make sure between the two of us we were covering all of their needs.  I was really lucky that my Title I teachers were amazing and I trusted what they were doing with my students.