Every year, each class gets one or two Station Days a year. I enjoy Station Day a lot because it puts the onus of the learning on the students. For me, Station Day is usually spent running around because they have a dozen questions and one teacher and are constantly seeking approval before writing down an answer. But it's worthwhile time because I get to really answer their questions and see what problems the students still have. Every year on Station Day, I usually go home exhausted and tired but feeling pretty good about my students and my teaching.
Preparation is the key for a successful Station Day. You need to decide on how the students will work, create a filler for students who finish dramatically early, and create the stations. Each station needs directions the students can read independently and figure out as well as whatever necessary to complete the task.
I have created Station Days for the topics that I know cause students a lot of trouble because they need to be in the thick of it and muddle around with the complexity of the language. I suppose you could make stations for vocab practice but I prefer different cards games and activities for that. Station Day, for me, is a day when they can struggle and triumph. Topics that have lent themselves well to me are the preterit vs imperfect or subjunctive when the vocab of the unit drives the grammar points.
To create the stations, I create various activities so that each station is something different to be done. Examples are: unscrambling sentences, matching sentence with a word that completes it, match beginning of the sentence with the end of a sentence, unscramble a story to put it in order, translate sentence, play tic tac toe, play memory or go fish, or match sentences with explanations for tense choice. Most stations have something tangible to do and accompanying cards to manipulate.
This is never something I send students alone to do; they are always paired for two reasons: educational and logistical. First, learning is a social endeavor. By pairing my students, they can learn from each other and talk out the problems they have and fill in each others' gaps in knowledge. I always pair students of like ability so that the kids who are really good with a concept will complete it and not feel like they did all the work and their partner did nothing. Additionally, by pairing students who struggle together, I can stay closer to those pairs to help them more. Secondly, if students work in pairs and there are 15 pairs and five stations, you only need to make 3 of each station. If students work individually and there are five stations, you need to make 10 of each station.
So that is from where Station Day came in my classroom and last week on Thursday I prepared for a day of running around and crazily answering questions about the preterit and imperfect tenses.
I started by giving the directions and explaining how Station Day worked. They would have around an hour to complete all four stations. They would record their answers on their answer sheet that is shared by the partnership. If they had questions, they should consult their vocabulary packet, grammar review packet and each other before asking me. I informed them that if they asked me but didn't have their packets out, I would not answer their question. They have to try and help themselves before I will help them. I also informed them that should they finish early, there was a word search on the back of their answer sheet. The word search had over 60 vocab words hidden and the more they found, the more Cleggeuros (currency of my class) they would earn to put toward making corrections on assignments.
Finally, I showed the slide with their partners and where each pair was to sit. I kept the students I knew who would struggle closer to me so I was readily available to help them. They picked up their first station, sat with their partners and got to work. The powerpoint that I made with the directions, also had count down slides that changed every minute so that students knew how long they had to complete their work. I find that giving them a countdown also focuses them much more.
Knowing all that I put into place to allow them success, I was still expecting the "Station Day Run Around" which must look like I'm a store manager on Black Friday. But what happened was remarkably and astonishingly different than my expectations: I was bored.
To my amazement my students were actually working in partners well, using their packets and consulting wordreference.com when they didn't know a word. I heard them saying things like "is this preterit because it's a one time action or because it's an interruption" and then the student who asked received a response either from his/her partner or from someone sitting nearby. Students were helping each other before they raised their hand and then the questions they asked me were thoughtful and legitimate rather than born out of a sense of helplessness as in years past.
I walked around impressed by my own genius. Was it I who had taught them the concept so well? Was it the pairings that I had chosen? Was it the activities being their level plus one so as to push them farther but not make it unreachable? Was it that my students were simply brilliant? Or had the stars aligned for this one class and one class only? It couldn't possibly happen again on Friday in both of my classes could it? Certainly not for my 4BD class which has needed more help than the other classes the entire year.
Yet it did. Three classes, three Station Days, three successes. I thought: either they knew what they were doing or they were making mistakes with confidence. I feared that when I graded their papers, I'd find that it was a disaster and they didn't ask questions when they should have.
However that didn't happen either and I was once again shocked and awed by my students. The grades were higher compared to the previous two years and the mistakes made were common mistakes with this topics and what I expected them to make.
I am extremely proud to do the work that I do.
I am extremely proud of my hard-working students who did their very best and were completely focused on the task at hand for the entire class. Because of their hard work and focused attention, I am also allowing them opportunities to correct their papers and earn credit back so they can ask me for clarifications on what is still troubling them.
I encourage every educator to try a Station Day and see if the stars will align for you and your students as well!
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