[00:00:00] Kirsten: This is the Social Studies Teacher Podcast, a show for busy elementary teachers looking for fun and engaging ways to easily add social studies into their classroom schedule without feeling overwhelmed or pressed for time. I'm Kirsten of the Southern Teach, an educator and mom who is passionate about all things social studies.[00:00:30]

[00:00:30] Kirsten: I love sharing ideas and strategies that are low prep and easy to implement, so let's dive in together.

[00:00:47] Kirsten: Hi there, and welcome to another episode of the Social Studies Teacher podcast. Happy August. It's hard to believe that it is already back to school time, and it just seems like just yesterday, it was [00:01:00] May and starting to become summertime. Time goes by so fast. But I'm excited to share about this topic today.

[00:01:10] Kirsten: Last topic, I talked about social studies stations, and it was really well received, so I'm super happy that you guys enjoyed that episode and I wanted to kind of do a little continuation as. Stations while focusing on specifically ELA literacy centers or stations, however you wanna call it. That [00:01:30] is our focus today.

[00:01:32] Kirsten: I taught ELA and social studies, so I have a lot of expertise in that field, in the upper elementary level, and so I wanted to share with you five. Literacy center stations that I think you'll really enjoy and your students will too. But as always, before we get started, I wanted to do a quick plug into my channel, the Southern Teach.

[00:01:53] Kirsten: I would so appreciate if you could subscribe like this episode if you're on YouTube, or you can [00:02:00] always leave a comment, share your favorites. Station activity ideas if you'd like to so that we can kind of start building that community that is so important in a YouTube channel. And if you prefer to listen to this in your earbuds, that's totally fine as well.

[00:02:16] Kirsten: You can always check out the Social Studies teacher podcast wherever you love to listen to podcast. And don't forget that every episode that I have for my podcast is also likely on the blog [00:02:30] that is on my website. So all you have to do is go to the southern teach.com/blog. So if you watched the social studies stations episode or listened to it, you know that I really enjoyed having stations in my classroom.

[00:02:46] Kirsten: It was always a big chunk of time. Usually around 45 to 60 minutes. I would always start my ELA and social studies block with a warmup. Then some type of mini lesson and activity, and then the [00:03:00] bulk of our block time was ELA stations, and this was, again, 45 to 60 minutes. This was something that. Was the bulk of our class period.

[00:03:12] Kirsten: And then I would allocate 35 to 45 minutes for social studies after we wrapped up stations. So we would transition into after the LA stations, the social studies block, and that was, its. Own section and own [00:03:30] part of my ELA and social studies time. But that was basically how I broke down and structured ELA and social studies.

[00:03:39] Kirsten: So today is mainly focusing on that ELA stations block. I usually had four to five groups for each class, and each group stayed in the same station each day. So let's say that station time was 60 minutes. Group one would be at a vocabulary station. Group [00:04:00] two would be at listening to reading or have a laptop or some type of device and work on that.

[00:04:06] Kirsten: And then another station might be with me at the small group kidney table, and so on and so forth. And they would be at that station. That whole entire independent time, and usually each station had a must do, like a, you do this first and then you have the option to do these other things. So that could be reading a book of their [00:04:30] choice, writing in their writing journal.

[00:04:32] Kirsten: They might be able to finish any incomplete work in the entire ELA social. Studies class, or they might do some type of online activity. So it just really dependent on the topic and what we were talking about in that point of time. So this is just something that I'm gonna be sharing with you as far as some literacy center ideas or station ideas.

[00:04:54] Kirsten: I know centers and stations are usually interchangeable. I called them rating stations, but [00:05:00] people might call them other things. That is what we're focusing on today, and I hope. You enjoy as an FYI. If you don't know, I do also create ELA resources. It's not the bulk of my focus currently at this moment, but when I started my Southern Teach store, I did create a lot of ELA activities and grammar activities just because that was where I was mostly teaching in that point in time.

[00:05:26] Kirsten: But now in the last few years, I've kind of shifted into [00:05:30] social studies. Still, you can purchase on my TPT store, any type of grammar activities or reading task cards and stuff like that. And so I will be sharing with you some resources that would align to the specific station that I talk about, but you don't have to use my resources.

[00:05:47] Kirsten: You might have something that you really love and enjoy doing with your students that you can easily incorporate, but I just wanted to share five of my favorite activities that you can do. First up are reading responses. [00:06:00] For reading response activities, it involves students selecting a book or text of their choice and they're responding to a menu of questions.

[00:06:09] Kirsten: Students can respond in a folder or in some type of reader's notebook that you have that's been set up at the beginning of the year, and it can be used throughout the year, and it encourages a lot of confidence and familiarity. Especially with learners who need extra support, and what you could do is have students share in their [00:06:30] respective groups after a certain period of time, maybe like the last 15 minutes of station's time, they take the opportunity to read out their responses and share with other group members.

[00:06:42] Kirsten: This makes a really great activity because during that station's time block, they're reading the text. And it could be a picture book, it could be a chapter book, it could be what they're kind of already reading. I always gave my students a choice of if you have a book that you're interested in reading or you wanna get in the [00:07:00] classroom library, pick out that book, they can read it, and then they're responding to it.

[00:07:04] Kirsten: And then towards the end. You can have them share it with other group members. Students are able to read at their own paste and they can reflect on what they're reading. The resources I have for reading responses are organized either by genre if you decide to choose the genre reading responses, and there are also reading responses that are an assortment of genres, and it's organized by month, so it's.

[00:07:29] Kirsten: [00:07:30] Kind of aligned with what you would typically teach based off of my experience. We always started with fiction text in the beginning of the year, so August and September are gonna have more fiction response prompts, and then it might go into nonfiction or informational in the middle of the year, like December, January, November.

[00:07:51] Kirsten: But you can always choose from either one or you can get a bundle and get all of the above for a discount. The second one are writing [00:08:00] responses. Having that as a station, being able to focus on certain genres of writing, like informative opinion, narrative, or research and inquiry, is a key skill that will encourage students to refine their writing.

[00:08:16] Kirsten: Very similarly to the reading response activities. You can have some type of writing menu of prompts that are organized by genre and students are writing. And it could be a [00:08:30] paragraph, it could be a whole page depending on your preferences, but this could be something that they take the time to really work on.

[00:08:38] Kirsten: Fine tune, even go through the writing process. Proofread edit with a partner in their group, and then they can share their responses in the last part of your station's time, I do have year round writing response menus and prompts that are super low prep to utilize. They can respond to a variety of topics for [00:09:00] every month of the year, and it encourages students to expand into detail because there's a tiny rubric for each response page that they could go off of, or you can use your own rubrics.

[00:09:10] Kirsten: Essentially, there's a writing menu for students to pick from, and also a writing page option. So this includes options to differentiate in this resource. By adding pictures, or you can have the option where there's no pictures and they're just doing mostly writing, and then there's that checklist on each page to make sure students have [00:09:30] the important information based on each genre.

[00:09:32] Kirsten: Next up task cards, but more specifically, you could do something like. Grammar task cards are one of my favorite station activities for students. It's so beneficial. It's self-paced, and it's easy to prep and implement. It's flexible also. You can have students work on the task cards by themselves, or you can have them work on it in groups or in pairs.

[00:09:53] Kirsten: And if you throw in the answer key in the station's bin, you can have them self-check after [00:10:00] they've completed the task cards. And I know it's so hard to teach grammar. In isolated periods of time because there's such a heavy focus on reading and comprehension related to reading in different genres, and especially writing and making sure that they're capable of writing for, let's say, state tests.

[00:10:22] Kirsten: But grammar is just as important because without grammar, you're not going to be able to write efficiently and also [00:10:30] understand the nuances of different texts. I have a grammar task card bundle that is super easy to implement and it increases in complexity as the number increases. But if you want to differentiate, you could always just assign 12 questions for groups that need more support.

[00:10:50] Kirsten: Or you can assign all 24 questions for your group set. We'll be able to do more in less time. [00:11:00] So there's different recording sheets. There's 18 grammar topics to choose from, and you can always assign a task card every week of the school year, or every one to two weeks, depending on what you wanna switch out.

[00:11:12] Kirsten: Alright, station number four. That is also of course, low prep are internet WebQuests. WebQuests are a really great way to integrate research and inquiry into your ELA block. The main gist of the WebQuest is that they're given some type of kid [00:11:30] friendly internet source or a topic and a set of guided questions, and they have to go on that specific source to find the answers to the questions.

[00:11:41] Kirsten: Or explain it based off of the information in the source. It's a great way to get them into researching a variety of informational and expository texts that are probably going to show up in a variety of state standardized tests. And it's also interesting and fun for students. My internet [00:12:00] WebQuest Bundle has.

[00:12:01] Kirsten: So many different social studies topics and science topics that you can choose from, and it's just a really great way to bridge the gap with the cross curricular teaching. 'cause students are hunting for those answers, using student friendly websites. There's QR codes for each topic, so it's super easy for them and it's.

[00:12:22] Kirsten: Low prep for you. You can assign this station as an independent activity, or you can have students work with a partner in their group, and [00:12:30] there are plenty of topics to assign once or more a week. The last station that would be great to implement is related to vocabulary. Called Word of the Week. I've always found vocabulary to be very difficult to teach in isolation, even with as much fidelity as possible.

[00:12:50] Kirsten: It just sometimes doesn't get the attention it deserves, but it could be a little bit easier with the Word of the Week resources that I have available, I've created [00:13:00] these resources specifically on commonly taught academic vocabulary. Tier two, I should say. So it's something that's going to be frequently seen across all subjects, and there's one for third grade, fourth grade, and fifth grade.

[00:13:18] Kirsten: Students take the time with this resource to learn a vocabulary word and they can complete the activities independently. And there's also a digital version with a link to an online dictionary in Thesaurus if you want [00:13:30] them to work on it with their devices. So to sum up the five literacy stations that I think are perfect for upper elementary, you've got the reading responses, writing responses, the grammar task cards, the internet WebQuests, and the vocabulary word of the weeks.

[00:13:47] Kirsten: So I think if you aren't already thinking about ELA stations, that these five are some that you can put at the top of your list. Check them out on my [00:14:00] blog@thesouthernteach.com slash blog. Or you can go into my TPT store titled The Southern Teach. So either way, you'll be able to make it so much easier to implement stations throughout the year.

[00:14:14] Kirsten: I always set around 45 to 60 minutes to do my stations. You could always shorten it depending on if you're doing one rotation a day or multiple rotations a day. So within 30 to 45 minutes I think is a sweet spot for having [00:14:30] literacy. Station time. Alright, well that is the end of this episode. I hope you enjoyed it.

[00:14:35] Kirsten: Again, make sure you like, subscribe, share with a friend, comment, whatever you wanna do to show that you are loving this podcast and this YouTube channel. I would so appreciate it. Thanks again and I will talk to you next time. Thanks for listening to the Social Studies Teacher podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, hit that subscribe button and leave a review.

[00:14:59] Kirsten: I would [00:15:00] love to hear your thoughts. You can also find me on Instagram at the Southern Teach. I can't wait for you to join me in the next episode for more teacher tips and strategies.