Fluency Station {Keeping Students “Busy”}

Am I the only one who has early finishers or 10 minute blocks of time with no real purpose (isn’t master scheduling grand….)? Today I would like you to meet two of my Personal Teaching Commandments:

• Busy work is a crime.
• Keep reading sacred.

Allow me to explain…

Busy work is a crime.
I do not like keeping students busy with busy work. I think that like anything in life, we need to know what our purpose is behind our tasks because it drives intrinsic motivation. This especially holds true in elementary school. Believe it or not ( and those who know me personally will believe it), I was the kid in school that used to say (in a whining voice); “When are we ever gonna have to use this!? Why do we have to do this?!” Now, I teach that kid, and that kid is the reason for my fourth cup of coffee every day.  My point being, if kids don’t feel like what they are doing matters, they aren’t going to really learn from it and they certainly aren’t going to enjoy it. If I throw a worksheet at them that has nothing to do with what we are learning, and then tell them to recycle it when they are done, I don’t really think they will be trying their best on it. I certainly didn’t as a child. I also believe that busy work and boredom breed behaviors, and who has time for that? Furthermore, with all of the new learning standards and expectations of our kiddos, who has time or can even justify busy work?

Keep reading sacred.
When I was getting my master’s in reading, I had an incredible professor, Dr. Zimmer. If you’re reading this, hi Dr. Zimmer! One of his personal teaching commandments was that reading should be a reward; a positive; a priority. This really resonated with me and I have carried it with me ever since. So often (and I am just as guilty as the next teacher but I have been trying to change), we say “Go get a book.” Well, I teach students with reading difficulties and I teach students with behavior problems. “Go get a book” doesn’t keep students busy when they:
a) can’t read
b) don’t want to
c) both a and b

Reading should be sacred- it should not be a last resort and it should not only happen when “all of the important stuff is finished.” It IS the important stuff. (Don’t even get me started on a child having to read when the other kids are having a privilege. Reading is not punishment!!!)  

Enter the Fluency Station. I had the idea for the Fluency Station after I read this post from The Autism Helper (who is so so so awesome, by the way). I knew that I couldn’t commit the adult supervision and the reading block time to it like she did, so I needed to make it something that would be fun, engaging and somewhat independent. I thought, how can I make this work for a variety of times, students, skills and subjects? Someday, I want to make one as organized and amazing as hers, but for this year, I can’t. There is so much I want to fit into my school day but there is just never enough time. But if I maximized the 5 minutes here and 10 minutes there, I realized my kids could gain some practice of the skills they needed most. So many of my students needed skill and drill practice of multiplication and division facts, sight words and content vocabulary but it would be impossible for me to plan to address all of those pieces throughout the day. Here’s what I came up with.

So there you have it. My big idea so that there would always be a “last resort” station for my kiddos that was relevant to their IEP goals, their current subjects and their interests. Like anything else, I wish I would have started this sooner and I wish there was more time for each student to use it. As you can imagine, it’s the same few kids who get through all four levels, and the same few students who never really use it. But, c’est la vie!