Launching Literacy Stations (Video)

Literacy work stations are being embraced in many elementary schools as a way to ensure students of all ages are completing thoughtful, challenging tasks while their teachers meet with small groups of students.

Debbie Diller, author of the book Literacy Work Stations, takes you into two primary classrooms to demonstrate how to create a thriving stations program. Patty Terry's first-grade students and Vicky Georgas' second graders work in stations that include a wealth of literacy tasks designed to build academic and collaborative skills across the curriculum. This three-part video series captures the teaching conversations Patty, Vicky, and Debbie have with their students in real-time as new stations are introduced, problems with existing stations are analyzed, and the match between station tasks and student needs are assessed.

Program 1: Launching Stations
Debbie explains the basic principles, and then launches work stations in two classrooms—the drama station in first grade, and the science station in second grade.

Program 2: Managing Stations
This program provides examples of the nitty-gritty issues that emerge with work stations, and how they are handled by teachers.

Program 3: Sustaining Stations
Ensuring students have interesting, engaging materials in stations and can work independently in them is an ongoing challenge for teachers.

DVD extras include audio tours of the work stations in both classrooms.