Literacy stations and behavior, can they really go hand and hand? I've spent 5 years in trial and error with my literacy stations in my self-contained behavior classroom and believe me it's hard work. A big behavior can either make or break your stations, can take away instruction from your whole reading block or just make you realize reading is just not happening that day for that particular student. It happens, I've been there and done that. Like I said, it's taken me 5 years to get to a set of stations I'm satisfied with. Since beginning these I've seen more independence, less behaviors and more engagement. Will this work for all of you? Absolutely not, but I hope from this post you can take something new away!
I have a series of 5 stations in my classroom: teacher led, instructional assistant led, Ipad, computer and independent. I'll go through each station individually and how I manage to handle behaviors and still continue to teach!
Stations are organized through a powerpoint that is broadcast up on my screen. It looks like this:
It's visually supported for students and staff. The colored boxes indicate the different levels of instruction or the different grade levels. In this one, orange is 1st grade, green is 2nd and purple is 3rd grade. I put the student's name in the corresponding boxes. On the far right are their computer station choices for the day and the bottom right microphone plays a transition song when our station is over!
Once I added more visuals to my screen my students THRIVED with being independent and know what part of the room they should be in. If you have a student who needs more supportive visuals, I would often take their schedule and using the visuals that are in the powerpoint, tape them to their desk.
I keep all plans in a folder for the subject. The colors on the board under student's names coordinate with the colored dots I put on work in the folder. For example: If I need to find all of my work for the orange group, I just find all the sheets that I labeled with an orange dot in the corner. This way of organizing across so many levels and grades has been a GAME CHANGER for myself and my instructional assistants.
My current classroom runs on 15 minute stations. How did I come about with the number 15? I took data! I took data on all my students on how long they could work and found the average. By the time students transition (1 minute) and I touch base with my student (2 minutes) we have about 12 minutes of hard instruction during that time.
As you can see, the stations are made to ensure a pattern of a more demanding task or station followed by a less demanding task or station. I purposely put the ipad station after my teacher led station because ipad in my room is something everyone wants to do. My students know if they work hard at my station they get to go to something more reinforcing next!
So now I'm going to break down what each station looks like:
Teacher station: This is where I teach the most important curriculum or teacher led content that I feel my students need. Often I'm working on phonics, fluency, the skill of the week, IEP goals or comprehension work. I tend to always follow the same pattern each week. So for example: every Thursday was working on comprehension. So no matter the grade level or skill level, everyone worked on that skill just at their level. This helped me to organize planning easier and make planning more efficient knowing I was planning similar content each week.
Aide Station: I used this station to reinforce the skills I was teaching at my station or to get extra practice on those skills students needed. My aide station always worked on vocabulary, extra phonics practice or sight word/fluency practice. Again, when I plan for the aide station I do the same pattern each week to make it predictable for students and easier to plan for me!
Computer Station: Here is what my weekly computer stations look like! I give students two options to give them more of a sense of control. On Wednesday they only have one option because I pick sites I really think would benefit their skill set and we have shortened stations due to early release. Friday is free day so they can pick whatever website they want. The sense of being able to pick from a choice of website helps to reduce behaviors during computer station!
Ipad station: Ipad stations is set up for students to locate a star to see what section of games they should be playing. So if the star is on the green color, then they can plan any of the games in green! I coordinate the colors to match subjects. Green games are reading, pink games are writing, blue games are math and orange games are fun ones! On Friday, I let them plan any games they want!
Independent station: This was one of the last stations I built into my literacy block. I've done independent stations a few different ways over the years. I've done it as a play station with toys, I've done a compliance task and I've done a worksheet. This way I'm going to show you just works the best for my students!
So they start off by finding their name with their schedule on the board. They find the task bin that matches the shape they have. They grab the task bin and complete it. Do I check it? no. Why? Because this station is focused on independence and I just want them feeling successful on their own. Next, they pull out the folder in the desk and follow the next thing on the schedule. They find the visual that matches the one in the folder. They have a worksheet to do! Last, they can grab the sensory bin in the desk or a coloring page and do until the station is over. Each day is a different task bin and then on Friday they have the freedom to pick whatever task bin they want!
All of the tasks at this station are low demanding because again, I just ask for independence from them. I want them to be comfortable working on their own. As the year progresses I will often begin checking independent work and task bins as necessary!
Here are a picture of all of my task bins! The shapes are literacy ones and the numbers are math ones!
My reading stations have evolved over the years to give students the power of choice, independency, behavioral momentum, staggered academic demands and create a visually supported sense of structure. What changes can you make in your reading stations to help support your students and create more independency with less behaviors?
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