Work Station Debriefing Idea

I had a great day teaching BISD teachers today. For y'all not from BISD- it stands for BY THE BEACH Y'ALL! There is something so amazing about the sound of waves.  I wish the waves were about 3 hours closer to my little town in Central Texas.  Alas, I will teach all day, and put my toes in the sand after.  Not a bad gig! :)

I digress. I was teaching teachers today and it always reminds me of more resources I should put on my blog- and of how long it has been since I've blogged. Sorry about that!

So my work in DC Public Schools for 1.8 years was to help teachers with Guided Reading and Work Stations, called Small Group Literacy Instruction.  We were able to provide a lot of resources during this time for teachers and we were able to share lots of resources that teachers created.

This idea is from a coach in DC Public Schools and I'm hopeful it will find its way into classrooms all around the country (and beyond for my International readers out there).

It is important to get feedback from your students about their work during Work Stations.  You are trapped teaching at the Guided Reading table and it is hard to know what it happening out there with the natives unless you ask them. Right?  I've shared the idea of Debriefing Cards with you before. And today I'm going to share with you another idea that will help students be metacognitive about their work during stations and also provide you feedback that can help your stations get better.

Imagine a poster like this hanging in your room....

or a similar file in student work folders.  Download it here!

A teacher can choose which number for students to chit-chat about with a partner before sharing with the whole group each day by calling off a number. "Turn and Talk about 2!" Feel free to change up the prompts under each number- but hopefully you can find a way to take this idea to your classroom for the 2014-2015 school year.

Happy summer! Happy planning! Next year is clearly going to be your BEST year!