Activities To Do At Learning Stations

 

Now that you know more about learning stations and how to introduce them into your classroom, you need a list of activities to use.  So today, I'll be reviewing quite a few activitieors to help you get started.  Sometimes, it is difficult to come up with activities so I'll help with that.  

One station should be the teaching station where the teacher works with students in a small group either providing scaffolding or enrichment.  The lesson here should consist of a hook, guided practice, and a check and review on assigned work.

As stated earlier, one station can have task cards. Cards that have the problem so that students can work on each problem and the answer should be easily available so they can check their work.  

Another station can have games that involve dice or cards.  I've used dice before to help set up the numbers for a binomial multiplication problem, or a trinomial.  The cool thing is you can find dice that have up to 20 sides. If you have four to five dice, you can use them for students to practice order of operations.  

On the other hand if you have cards and students who need some practice with cards, try gains and losses where students start with 15 points. Then one student flips over the top card of a deck that has had all the face cards removed and if the card is black they subtract the value from 15 but if it is red, they add the value. At the end of the game or time period, the one with the most is the winner.  You can also do the multiplication of binomials with cards so black is negative and red is positive and you count the face cards as 11, 12, and 13. 

Have a station that has real world applications of the topic or concept students are learning.  For instance, students can calculate pitch for a roof, grade for going down a mountainous road or looking at what happens when you change the dimensions of a room using algebra.  It takes a bit of looking but these activities can be found. Check out Illustrative Mathematics, Yummy Math, YouCubed, or look for real world activities that have them collect and interpret data.  

One station should include some sort of online activity be it Desmos, Khan academy, have students create a flip grid video talking about how to do something, IXL or other site.  The lesson can be practice, learning how to do something, a quick quiz either in Khan academy, IXL, or even google forms.

These are just a few ideas that will help you get started with Learning stations.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.