Rotation Stations

Rotation stations, station rotations, whichever way you think the syntax is correct, rotation stations are a great way to have the students doing a variety of activities in the classroom while getting them  moving in one period. Most teachers are completing 3 - 5 different activities per period, so rotating them around in stations should not be a big deal. I have used rotation stations successfully with all my Chinese language classes for years, but the system would work for any subject area.

Rotation station basics are that they are;

• different and differentiated activities or tasks each station
• timed station activities
• manageable activities
• classroom setup

What rotation stations promote are;

• blended learning activities
• collaborative learning
• group and individual work
• student centered learning
• more teacher assistance

What activities really work;

• inflipped learning (my blog post on flipping)
• blended learning
• any well-planned activity
• differentiated activities
• entry and exit tickets

What you will need to do;

• Like any lesson, plan your lesson around your aims and objectives. 
• Take into consideration the students in the class.
• Train the students to be quick at moving the tables and chairs about and then getting them back into place before the end of the lesson.
• Have some type of timing device, for example the white board screen with a count down clock.
• Decide how long each rotation will be.
• To manage what will be a hectic lesson, perhaps think about the traffic light system so you do not have students lining up to see you or have them waiting with their hands up for ages, because you will be busy.
• Make sure you have activities that students can do with little scaffolding, or can help each other with. Have extension work ready and differentiate each activity. This is probably one of the key components, so make sure you spend decent time preparing this one.
• Each time you have a rotation station lesson, trial different settings and groups, see what and who works the best in various combinations.
• Have each station clearly labelled or up listed on the board.

During the rotation station activity you will need to;

BEFORE

• Prepare the lesson activities
• Prepare the timer.

START 

• Explain the activities on each station and remind them of the traffic light system and rules of not moving around the class during activities. After a few times, you will not need to explain each activity unless it is new.
• Ask the students to move the tables and chairs into position.

DURING

• Give a one minute warning before the end of each rotation so they can wind up the activity. If the activity is not finished, this can be caught up with if you have a activity completion/teacher help station, next lesson or at home.
• Walk around the class attending to the traffic lights. Answer questions, clarify activities, manage the class.

Being a language teacher, I tried to prepare at least 4 activities. These covered the 4 language skills of listening, reading, writing and speaking, sometimes we had 5 activities as it depends where the students are up to in the course and level. 

For specific rotation station activities and references/resources, please check out the Google slide presentation.

Thanks! Be great to connect or discuss rotation stations with you!

Video Activities for the Languages Classroom (1)

       

Using videos in the language classroom is one way of getting authentic language to the students.  In most cases, students can have access to your video activities via prepared video activities and flipped lessons in the classroom or at home, so accessibility is a strong feature and advantage when using videos.  

Some suggested teaching ideas for video activities

Videos can be used at any stage of the teaching and learning process.  For languages, videos can be a great way to introduce, revise and review vocabulary, sentence patterns and language concepts.  With some of the products below, you can create and design video activities to also be formative and summative activities.  Following are a few suggested activities how I have used videos in the classroom.  

Collaborative group work: students can view a video together in pairs, taking notes, stopping, replaying, and discussing the content as they go.  With products like Educanon (see below) and Edpuzzle, strategically placed questions or references by the teacher, get the students thinking and add another activity apart from those mentioned above. 

Flipped Lessons: Flipped lessons have been around for ages and similar to the collaborative group work idea, students can work not only in groups but also on their own.  The great thing about flipped lessons and using videos is that students can go over the material as many times as they need to master the content.  So for example, if they have missed a lesson, they can catch up on their own, take notes and discuss the content with the teacher. 

To view some of my flipped lessons, please go to my Narralakes Youtube channel. 

Educanon 

Educanon is a free web based product that is a powerful tool for any teacher.  You can create your classes or student lists easily by copying and pasting your lists or adding them in manually.  The Educanon dashboard is neat and easy to navigate and the functions below should help you get started.

Creating: The teacher can create an activity via the Design page.  Look for a video or upload your own from a wide range of web based sources, such as Vimeo, Youtube, and the Khan Academy, just to mention a few.  Once you have found your video, past the url in the finder, Educanon finds the video and then you can start adding activities.  You can add questions and crop the video if you only want to use parts of it.  

Assigning:  Once you have created your video activity, you can assign a class from your list.

Sharing: The great thing with Educanon is that you can share it with students or anyone via Twitter, email or Facebook with the url code or embed it into your web page.  

Bulbs: Bulbs are basically your storage area for your videos and then assign classes or students to them, creating the "bulb" .  You can store the videos you have worked on and created or find new videos.  

Monitor: Another great feature of Educanon is that you can monitor your students, this is great for formative or summative assessments and as with most good products, grades can be exported and saved.  

Overall, I find Educanon an excellent product. The free version has most of the functions that any class teacher would need, not many of us would have more than 8 classes.  If you do need feel you need the extra functions the Basic version does not provide, the Premium and Blended School versions come at a reasonable price.  

Here's an example of part of one of my Educanon videos. 




Check out my video resource list at Pinterest. Follow Ken's board Videos on Pinterest.

Online Tools that make a task fun!

There are many online web tools that can make learning fun for the student and are valuable resources for teachers.  With the tools listed below, teachers can actually be giving students a variety of activities such as pre-task (getting to know), formative and summative tasks.  Well planned tasks can assist teachers easily gather student information and see how they are progressing once set up.  

Prior or pre-testing, also known as entry tickets, is to gain the background knowledge of what your students know if they are a new class or before introducing a new topic.  They can take the form of just simple questionaires or surveys and usually short.  For example, if I was to teach a new class of Year 7 (1st year high school) Chinese, I would pre-test them to see what knowledge and language ability they had.  You can find the example I created in Socrative, if you have a Teachers or Students account, you can search for it on Socrative and search for SOC-12288269.  

Socrative is an easy to use web based application for teachers and students.  You can download the apps for iOS and Android and there are lots of support and forums out there.  Socrative's power is not only the smooth and easy way you can design your activities, but also in the way that you can include games and most important of all for teachers, the feedback function.  As soon as the activity is finished teachers can at the press of a button receive an emailed spreadsheet of the results.  You can download from other teachers from the generous list of shared, prepared activities at Socrative Garden.  Student can access the activity via the web or download the app. 

Kahoots  is a fun tool that is similar to Socrative.  The interface is different though and once in the activity it is very engaging.  Students find it very entertaining and it has a count down function that really engages students.  It also has a feedback facility for teachers with a new download to Google drive function.  You can log onto the Kahoots website and create an account for free and then start designing your activities. 


Google Forms are incredibly powerful as an online tool that you can create a multitude of activities with. When you download the Flubaroo or Doctopus add-ons, it is an even more powerful application.  Teacher feedback, like in Socrative and Kahoots, is sent via the email in a Google sheet and then you can check out the data.  To log onto the activity, the student can be sent the link or it can be hyperlinked on your webpage. 

Quizlet is a useful addition to this list of free web tools for teaching and learning.  Similar to the ones mentioned above, Quizlet can be used to support student learning by creating lists for vocabulary and sentence pattern activities in a variety of languages.  It's test feature is a good summative and formative tool that gives a variety of options to how to set up the test.  The only negative aspect of Quizlet is that it does not have the teacher feedback like Kahoots and Socrative in the form of an excel spreadsheet.  I have mentioned this to the Quizlet people but their response was to get the students to screen shot and send it which I don't think is a good option.  For such a good product and if you pay for the teacher's version like I do, I think an excel feedback facility for teachers would make Quizlet one of the best out there.  Besides this gripe, it does have several great feature for example, it has is that is provides native speaker audio for the texts and a few basic but fun games, even on the free version!  The iOS and Android apps work well as well, but do not have all the functions the web based platform has.  

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