English

I recently had success with two similar formats: **learning stations,** and a **café**.

In this model, I come up with four equally challenging and important things for kids to do in small groups of about 4. For the learning stations to work, the activities should work in any order.
 * Learning Stations**

I write directions for each activity and place or tape up the directions in four corners of the room. Then I put the students in groups and have them cycle through the activities, maybe 10-5 minutes each.

Sometimes I'll alternate the //kinds// of activities--so in my poetry class, for example, I had two stations in which students wrote poetry, and two stations in which they discussed some of the poems we'd read for homework, using two different approaches/lenses. I find it focuses the students to ask them to leave a line of poetry or a word of wisdom for the next group who will visit their station.

I like stopping the stations about 10 minutes before the end of class so we have time to do some sort of closing or reflective activity, such as reading a group poem that we've all been contributing to all period, or writing down the most important discovery they've made today and then perhaps sharing that with a buddy.

A café is a lot like learning stations in that the students are in four small groups, and they move to four corners of the room to do four different activities.
 * Café**

But the café is different in that the whole class does the same activities in the same order. What changes is the membership of the groups and where you're sitting in the class. So basically, a café is a gimmick to add movement and variety to what might otherwise be a deskbound lesson.

To set up a café, again, write directions for the four steps and place those directions in the corners. I like to add a sense of mystery and excitement by putting steps 2, 3, and 4 in envelopes, to be opened when we reach those steps. The contents of the envelopes might be a handout with a short quotation that the students are to discuss, or a picture that they are to compare to some reading they did last night.

The trickiest thing about the café is managing the movement, but once you get the hang of it it's easy. Here are the steps:
 * 1) Have the chairs set up in four clusters as the students arrive, with one directions packet in each cluster. Kids will just randomly sit in one cluster and begin step one (maybe a discussion of last night's reading or a specific passage). One of them will be the scribe, who takes a few notes on the step one directions page that I've provided.
 * 2) The movement always works like this: the scribe stays put and the other three go to three different stations from each other. Then the new groups appoint a new scribe. The groups proceed to step 2.
 * 3) The groups move again, with the new scribes staying put. This way, the same students may overlap groups with each other, but mostly the students will be reshuffled each time. You can encourage students to try to find new buddies each time.
 * 4) For step four, I usually like to do a reflection activity: write down the most important three things you realized today. That way students will have some sort of record of what they learned, but they haven't been burdened by endless notetaking.
 * 5) Often I will photocopy the note sheets that the various scribes provided and share them with the class. Another good option would be to have four laptops and to have the students take turns putting notes in a google doc--I think I'll try it that way next time.

So that's how these two activities work. You can do them for the whole period or part of it.

Erika Drezner