I had the pleasure of visiting Megan Schaum's 1st grade classroom at Valley Ranch. Her station procedures had been noted as pretty amazing and I was told that I needed to go see them... I have to agree, they were pretty incredible!
To begin, Megan discusses all the stations with her class. She goes station by station to make sure they understand the concept and why they are working on that particular skill. She leaves this chart of rotations on the smart board for the duration of the stations. Usually her learners work on the stations for a week and typically, they will go through the rotations twice in the week (3 stations per day for 4 days).
After discussing the rotations, her learners are free to begin in their designated station groups.
Here her learners were working on matching time cards.
There were obviously many different ways to do this!
This group was working with Tangrams on the iPad.
At the teacher table, Megan was working with her learners on shape bingo that she had made. Her questions ranged from "Row B- How many sides are on a trapezoid?" to "Row O- What shape has 6 vertices?" and her learners would mark that answer on their boards. She was constantly monitoring their thinking and providing immediate feedback if they thought differently than the appropriate answer.
During this station, learners were working on the app "30 hands" on the iPads. They would take a picture of a shape or a group of shapes and then they would record themselves talking about the attributes of the shape to make a slideshow.
Finally, this group was working on their facts which were differentiated by their own skill level. I saw a few working on addition while some others were working on division!
I love seeing anchor charts up in a classroom! What a wonderful way for our learners to refer back to their prior learning!
With one minute left in the rotation, Megan gave a cue to clean up which prompted all the learners to immediately start the clean up process. After one minute, they needed to be lined up next to their rotation to switch to the next rotation. If they completed the clean up quickly and efficiently, their group would be invited to the dance party at the end of the rotations.
Ready to switch to the next station when Mrs. Schaum gave the launch word, "Texas".
These procedures were so impressive to witness and I know they made the stations so much more effective because they did not have to stop for any little behavior problems. Thank you for inviting me to your class, Ms. Schaum!
If you have any questions, please email Megan Schaum and I am sure she would love to help you out!
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