By Leticia Daza, SLL ES Teacher, Asociación Escuelas Lincoln – Buenos Aires Argentina
For the purpose of maximizing my Elementary students learning a new language I decided to put in practice the strategy of Literacy Learning Stations designed to meet my students’ and my own needs. It represents for me a great and meaningful manner to make my students practice this new language. Through this I can differentiate their learning adapting each station to my students’ different necessities. I have 5 stations.
1. Reading Station
2. Writing Station
3. Audio Station
4. Vocabulary Station
5. Working with the teacher Station
Every Station has written directions on what they must do, in case that my students don’t remember what was discussed at the begging of the period. I divided the students into different groups heterogeneously and changed the groups constantly. I think that this is better because as they work individually within the group with their partners, they can help each other if needed. In the reading Station, students read different books that they can choose online. I use the Reading A-Z online resource. The students decide what to read according to their own level of reading based on an assessment previously done by me. I have a Chart with their names and their corresponding level of reading. They use their IPads for reading online. In the Writing Station, students have their own folder where they can decide what to write about, it can be a journal, a poem, or writing according to the lesson taught (this station is independent of our Writing Workshop). In this station students write according to their level of writing, some of them can write more than 2 paragraphs while others just one paragraph or a few sentences. Then in the Vocabulary Station, my students can work with the IPads by using apps for vocabulary or different activities like word puzzles, etc. Next in the Audio Station, students use their IPads as well for listening to audio books, and also recording their reflections. Finally, they work in the teacher Station doing conferences with me about their writing or we do a reading comprehension assessment or we can talk about the audio.
It’s amazing how the students love to work with these Stations because they can rotate every 10 minutes to a different one. They are very focused on what each Station is for and they take full advantage of the time in each one. It’s remarkable to see the progress that my students are doing, not only in learning the new language, but also they gained independence because they are controlling their own learning and choices through the different Stations. They are motivated, and the most important thing is that they become very collaborative with each other.
Resources:
How does differentiation work with Literacy Centers?
Literacy work Stations
The Daily Cafe
Tomlinson, Carol Ann (2014). The Differentiated Classroom 2nd Edition