Student Built Learning Centers
In this video, Becky Ramirez from Odessa, Texas talks about a great idea she’s implemented in her classroom – student-built learning stations! Often we think of station teaching as a strategy for teaching elementary school students. I’ve always encouraged teachers to use stations for classes at every grade level, and Becky’s use of stations with her freshman English classes is a great example – with a “novel” twist.
Student Built Learning Centers Incorporates Group Problem Solving Skills
Becky’s class is split into groups; as they work through a unit, each group puts together a station for their fellow students on an assigned portion of the material. One of the rules – and I think this is one of the most important things in implementing stations in the classroom – is that the Center must not be a worksheet. The point of station teaching is getting students involved with the material in unique ways, and worksheets just aren’t effective in engaging students.
Once the stations are ready, each group rotates to work on the activities at the other groups’ centers. Becky’s class had come up with some great ideas for stations; “I’ve had vocabulary quilts, I’ve had timed quizzes, we’ve had Twister with different things, Monopoly-based games on short stories.”
Student Built Learning Centers Fosters Critical Thinking Skills
Like all group activities, grading can be a challenge. In Becky’s class, goals for each station are established from the beginning. Once students have finished their stations and visited each of the other stations, the class discusses each station’s activity, pointing out the things they really enjoyed and learned from and providing constructive ideas for how the stations could be more effective. Students grade each others’ work as well as their own, and the final grades take into account how well the students worked together in their groups. As new students come into the classroom, they see examples of previous students’ work so they know what’s expected of them when they create their own stations.
Student Built Learning Centers Save Teachers Time!
Many teachers don’t implement stations because they can take a considerable amount of time – and creativity – to put together. By allowing students to teach each other by constructing centers for their classmates, this burden is lifted and students become much more deeply engaged with the material as they think up ideas to teach their classmates. As Becky says, “Their ideas are much better than anything I could have come up with, and they love it because they’re ‘owning’ their products.”
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