The idea of
using stations in a high school classroom is a popular one, and with back to
school time here or looming for some, it’s gaining traction. Jennifer Wolfe’s post,No More Lectures: Try Back to School Stations Instead describes using them in her middle school classroom. I tried them out in my high school speech
class, and loved it!
Using stations achieved
several things: the process allowed students to move around my room, had
students using the interactive whiteboard for once, gave me feedback on
students so I could get to know them, and helped us accomplish some minor tasks
that would suck up too much time if we did them as a class.
I created five stations: a
survey about the class content on the interactive whiteboard, a computer
station to complete the Personal Report of Communication Anxiety online, a
postcard selection site, a personal survey for students to fill out, and an
introduction to our first speech assignment. My room is a good sized one, with a projector and interactive whiteboard, a pod of students computers (3 out of 6 currently working), and 10 rectangular tables arranged into five squares. This is a partial view of my room. A bit of the computer pod is visible off right, under the shelf of trophies.
One motivation for using
stations was the idea that students spend a lot of time sitting and listening
the first couple of days of school. I
agree that listening is an important skill, but I had promised students on the
first day that in our speech class, we spend more time doing stuff than in a
typical class. Setting up stations gave
us all a chance to circulate, with a purpose.
The interactive whiteboard
in my room is a constant challenge to me.
I appreciate it, but I always feel that students don’t use it
enough. I met the challenge by making
the whiteboard one of the station sites.
I set up a survey on Google Forms to solicit students’ opinions about
which of the four topics in the class they were most interested in
studying. The survey, which you can find
here, is short, and students simply clicked on “Submit Another Response” when
they were through and tagged another student to complete the survey.
Another station had students
complete the Personal Report of Communication Anxiety online. This is a wonderful tool! The results help me
see which students might need extra support or different strategies to speak in
front of the class confidently. I simply
added a link from my website to the online version of the instrument and then have students record their results on and index card. At another station, students filled out
another kind of survey, linked here. Since I ask them to use complete sentences to
answer the questions, the responses also serve as short writing samples.
At the postcard station, I
left a pile of postcards from which students chose one they especially liked and
addressed it to themselves. I posted instructions about to address a postcard
(a skill most freshman don’t seem to possess) and ask them to drop the cards into a
basket. At some point in the semester, I’ll
find something positive to share with the student, jot it down on the card, and
mail it. If we do this as a whole class,
it takes a lot of time since some students complete it easily and others agonize
over the choices. Making this one station
in the rotation made the process flexible enough I didn’t feel guilty about
implementing it. I try to have a variety
of cards. Last year I purchased a set
featuring art from Pixar; this year I added some with animals done by different
artists.
Aside from the activity at
each station, I learned more about students as they completed the activities. Who was able to complete the stations on
their own? Who needed to be told where to go next, even when the instructions
said they didn’t need to do the stations in any order? Who helped their
classmates problem-solve? I left each hour knowing more about my students even
before I collected the work at each station and reading it.
