It's Sunday evening and I am sitting in front of the TV with my laptop. I am thinking about what I upcoming this week as well as the MS Sunday Funday Post from I Speak Math. This weeks topic is Stations. I have never used Stations at the High School level. I have always wondered how the elementary school teachers structure these stations. In any case, here are my research questions...
I have 42 minutes for each class I teach. Would I need to do this over two class periods? How much time should I really count on of those 42 minutes? So how many stations? Would the questions need to be more process oriented? How do you make sure the high school students stay on task? Could one station be a Study Island? How many students should I include in each group? How long do they stay at each station?
This weeks topics:
Algebra I: writing an equation for a parallel line, quiz, scatter plots, line of best fit
Geometry: exterior triangle = sum of two remote interior angles
Algebra II: domain, range, inverse functions, simplifying radical expression
Should I create a station setup for Algebra I Quiz Review?
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I do have one other objective for the week --- teaching Algebra I study skills! I have created the quiz review but I created the quiz review so the paper will be single sided with each question about the size of a note card.
I want the students to cut out the questions and complete the work on the opposite side of the paper.
Should I have students complete the work in class? homework?
Should it be graded for accuracy or completion?
If graded on accuracy should I allow corrections?
How do I get the students to review the cards until they have understanding?
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I think this is enough thoughts for the week. I will let you know how it goes and what I did for each.
Hi Kelly,
ReplyDeleteThe first time I did stations, I was too nervous to have a bunch of kids moving about, so instead, I moved the stations about...I put them on
18 x 24 construction paper...and had groups of 4 move them one group to the left. I certainly think 42 minutes is enough time (whoa, that is short!) Maybe try four stations the first time. (or depending on how many students you have, 2 sets of three different stations or 2 sets of 4 stations, so they only need to complete 3 or 4)
I would make each station at most 5 minutes, depending on the task. The station can have multiple problems that are similar. One can be slopes, one can be is the point on the line, why or why not, one can be correlation...have them make up a scenario that would have a positive, negative and no correlation, have them write an equation for line of best fit given a set of data already plotted, or ask them what is the best line of fit given a few different equations and make them justify their answer. Sometimes if you give each person in the group a job, "time keeper, writer, reader, checker" they are more focused. Make the station day worth as much as one homework so they know you mean business. Always put an extra credit problem on the station so that if they have extra time, they can tackle that problem. Maybe do a silly station, that is who can make the most words from the letters in Scatter Plot.
You can also play music so they know to freeze when the music stops and then they can move when everyone is frozen.
Check out my station idea at
http://zicker63.blogspot.com and keep those questions coming!
Good Luck. Let me know how it goes,
Amy