Stations Anyone? Please respond if you have experience or opinions!

Our math curriculum co-ordinator had us visit a Chicopee school that has 90 minute blocks, access to amazing technology (IPADS for almost every student) and three teachers (or paras) per class.  The setup was that they had a 20 minute full class lesson then about 3 rotations of 20 minutes each in each station.  The stations were one full of a specific lesson with the teacher with 6 students while the others rotated through either a Versatile station, some with worksheets relating the topics, an online station teaching a skill, a game station with one other student.

It was stated that this station technique is pervasive throughout the school and has been able to bring the school from a level 4 to a level 3.  The students were well behaved and seemed on task.

We were told to adopt the station approach in math and this has been pushed through to reading classes as well.  The problem is that we only have 50 minutes for a class, are for the most part teaching alone for the majority of classes and have very limited technology.  The students on IEP’s have mainly severe ADHD and lose their work from one station to the next and tended to “break up” the work between the students so that they only did a portion and copied the rest.

I tried this for 2 months and became so behind in the curriculum that I gave up trying to do them.  The students were complaining the whole time during this and they felt they weren’t learning anything.  I am sure they weren’t.  If you are alone, you can’t give them new work to work on since they can’t access you for questions.

 

Does anyone have a successful station setup without long blocks?  I feel if I don’t adopt this approach in the future, I will have to look for a new job!

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