Below is an example of a math lesson using station rotations.
Pre-Assessment
Normally, I would highly recommend a website like Socrative to pre-assess your students on the skill you will be working on. Assessment tools like Socrative give you instant data in order to group your students for stations and give them what they need in small group. However, for this lesson, I used data collected from the previous lesson's formative assessment to group my students and guide my small group instruction. I knew there were some students who were struggling with comparing lengths of objects in word problems. The key word there is some! Many of my students were able to use a strategy to find the difference in two lengths. Therefor, I did not need to review this skill with ALL my students. The students who needed that intervention were in a group together. The other students who successfully completed the previous day's assessment were in a group ready for a new activity.
Stations
Typically, I set up four different stations for a lesson. This way, there will be six students at each station. Two stations are normally a partner or independent activity that practices a previous or current skill that we've been working on. One station is a "tech station", which is typically a Wixie assignment that focuses on a skill. The last station is the "teacher station", where I deliver differentiated instruction based on the results from the pre-assessment. Each group of students spends 6-8 minutes at each station before we rotate. At the end, each group has visited all four stations.
Practice Station - Independent
This station was a practice/review station. We have been practicing measuring using non-standard units such as tiles and paperclips. This was an activity I put together to review this skill, although there are MANY like this available on Teachers Pay Teachers (please excuse my typo on this activity...I realize I put a picture of tape next to "Stapler", oops!). Students were asked to measure each picture using tiles and paperclips, then record the length on their recording sheet.
Practice Station - Collaborative
This was a FUN station for the students and an EASY one for me to put together! Students had to take turns measuring each other using Popsicle sticks and "basketball feet" (from Investigations). They loved comparing each other's lengths and finding out how long they were. I did include a recording sheet in order to make it easy for them to compare their lengths.
Tech Station - Wixie
My "tech station" was Wixie once again! This time, I made a template that had students measure two pictures then find the difference in length. After this lesson, I was able to go back through my teacher account and check out the completed projects. I was pleasantly surprised to see students using subtraction strategies to find the difference!
Teacher Station
My teacher station was different for each group. For my students who needed extra practice solving story problems that involved finding the difference in lengths, I had a re-teach lesson prepared for them. After talking about what is happening in the problem and giving them ideas for solving, we practiced a few problems on whiteboards.
My other students were ready for a new activity. With these students, we discussed the difference units make in measuring. I had 3 strips of paper, all different in length. For our units, we were using "baby feet" (from investigations) and Popsicle sticks. I wanted students to come to the realization that they would need to use more baby feet to measure and less Popsicle sticks. We measured each strip using both units.