Stations in Secondary a Must! - Revising and Editing Review

For at least a year, I have wanted to implement elementary stations / centers into my 7th grade classroom.  My sister teaches 2nd grade, and I saw the value of all that she did.  I just couldn't seem to put it together or wrap my head around how I could make it work with 5 classes (137 students) with so many varying levels and styles of learning.

I finally decided to take the leap for a portion of my STAAR Writing Review unit.  I hate test review. I truly do despise it.  The kids are bored, I'm bored and it never ends well.  This year, my principal challenged the teachers to stay creative through our STAAR review.  The dreaded testing review.  My teaching partner and I decided we would stop talking about stations and centers and actually give it a shot.  The kids have already learned the content, so we couldn't really do much damage... : )

We created 8 different stations to work on writing, revising, and editing in different ways. 
1.  Freewrite Station - various prompts and a writer's journal

2.  Revise Your Own Work Station - writer's journal and some score 4 examples

3.  Sentence Organization - hands on manipulatives to create a paragraph
4.  Revising Multiple Choice - Kamico as the source and Edmodo for delivery meithod
5.  Editing Multiple Choice - Kamico as the source and Edmodo for delivery meithod
6.  Sentence Editing - Similar to DOL... not MC
7.  Dead Words Station - Said is Dead and other boring words...provided some replacement word lists
8.  Revising Mulitple Choice Onlinne Game - already made online...just provided a QR code to students to scan

Any of these would work in a 1:1, BYOD, or use of a computer lab for the day environment.

10-15 minutes per station.  Provided a Passport Document to each student to provide evidence from each station.  (image attached)  Students work in groups of 3-4. Travel when music is played.  May work through stations in any order.

After the first day today... I am confident in saying it was a WILD SUCCESS!  It was a completely student led classroom today and 99% were completely engaged.  I even told my principal is was my best day teaching.

The stations weren't as pretty or fancy as my elementary teaching sister would have created, but still pretty darn good for a non-creative secondary type!

At the end of the day, I wished I had done this all year at various points.  Now that my feet are wet, I know it can be done in a secondary classroom with great success.  I challenge you to give it a try!

Maas Out!