When designing writing stations, just look at what they were reading for inspiration. If they read a menu, ad, review, Tweet, text, book, or comic… now they can “write” one!
Keep these questions in mind when you plan the station activity:
* Why are they doing this activity as a group instead of individually? This is their time to learn how to work and learn in group settings.
* Is the activity appropriate to their proficiency level? Try not to take them back down to Novice Low if they are Intermediates. Also don’t frustrate them with too difficult ones.
* What is each person’s role in the group? Be specific in your directions.
* What are authentic writings for the current unit? Relevance = motivation.
SKYPE
They can create their own accounts or maybe you can connect with another school. I suggest to have a list of questions for them to ask/answer.
TEXTING
If they can’t use their phones, you can give them a blank sheet.
HANDS-ON
Writing doesn’t have to be with a pencil or keyboard. Mix it up! Here they can describe photos (funnier the better) or personal thoughts.
INFOGRAPHICS
Thanks to Stephanie for the “Infografía” readings. I love them! Now I think this would be a great way to create with new vocabulary words. One group member can research, one can find pictures, one can write, one can design, etc. I would suggest PicCollage app, Pages or something similar.
CAPTIONS or COMICS
I am still working on how to make this more group friendly. I give them magazines and these captions (some with prompts like “I think that… I like…”). They cut out a picture and finish the caption.
We are continuously adding writing activities to the tab “Activities by Mode” at the top of the page. See if you can adapt them to fit groups and stations!
What writing stations do you have?
Want to read more about stations??
Kara–so glad you like the Infografias…isn’t it awesome!? Great post! Could you elaborate on some more of the “hands on” ideas as a follow up to the readings? I see you’ve put pic collage…however we can’t do this without Ipads :(…and you mentioned the handout similar to the tweets. But by theme, maybe some of us can give some ideas?
I’ll start: Maybe for the learning target of “I can identify myself.” one could pose a challenge to a group where 1). they search various magazines and jot down/or cut out as many examples of descriptions of people in Spanish highlighting the adjectives used; 2) they then create their own on a piece of paper by bringing in their own pic using glue sticks and markers.
Maybe this is sooo basic that it almost sounds stupid, but I think that they would be really exposing themselves to the language throughout the activity. Then they can maybe pick up a word or two to incorporate it into their vocab!
I LOVE this idea of writing stations…however, I need some more creative and unique ideas! I think that collage after collage may not be as excitiing and fun after a while! LOL, so thematically speaking, what “products” could they produce as a result of learning the writing which would have been modeled first!? Anyone have anything?
🙂
What are infografias? Always looking for new material….
Sandi–go to infografias.com and you’ll see several authentic reading texts based on random topics. The layout of these is very similar to what I would describe as a young-adult “picture dictionary”. Check them out!