Station Rotation Inspiration

Blog 3 - Catlin Tucker's Blog

Station Rotation Lesson Design

-Tion, -tion, -tion, -tion! The title reminds me of that great song from The Electric Company about the t-i-o-n suffix and how to pronounce it ... but many of you are probably too young to remember it! (It's the one from the 70's ...) I use it all the time with my reading students, to make them laugh! But I digress ...

Dr. Tucker continues to amaze me with her plethora of ideas for teachers, especially those teaching fully online or in a concurrent classroom situation. This blog was about her recommendation to employ the station rotation model to maximize learning; in suggesting stations she means different learning activities, not necessarily physical stations to visit. She lists three compelling reasons to use stations in a rotation; "the small group dynamic, opportunities to differentiate more consistently, and increased student control over the pace at which they move through individual tasks."

The three types of stations that Dr. Tucker suggests are a teacher-led station (virtual or in-person), an online station, and an offline station. What I really appreciate is the way she has emphasized a different purpose for each of those station types, which I think makes them much more intentional. Looking at stations in this way causes me to reevaluate why I want to use stations, and how to design each learning activity so that it will achieve my desired outcome.

I am fairly familiar with how to implement different stations at an elementary level, but it does not come as naturally to me with my middle school classes. Dr. Tucker has shared an abundance of specific ideas for stations in the areas of math, English, history, and science. The idea charts she has created are amazing, and it makes me want to create a similar one for Spanish! I think I'll put it on my to-do list for this summer and see if I can get my other world language teachers to collaborate with me.