A New Workstation

Last year I became very disappointed with my workstations. I just didn't feel like my kiddos were doing anything but playing around during their "work" time. This year we have a new basal series and so throughout the week I have been looking through materials. I am not a huge fan of any basal but I do use it for shared reading, I use it to pace my phoneme skills, and this series has a testing strategy for each unit. Since my kiddos are getting ready to take the state test I figure it wouldn't hurt them to learn some of the strategies they will need.
During the All Write conference in June I went to hear Georgia Heard. If you have never read, listened to, or aren't familiar with Georgia then you are living under a rock. I am a big fan! I was fortunate enough to listen to her speak about the Revision Toolbox. She created a revision center/workstation in her son's classroom. This was a place where kids could go and do some writing exercises to strengthen their revision skills. So, this year I am trying to incorporate that station during my small group instruction time. Here are some of the things that my students will be working on:
-Two verbs, walking and sleeping, can you think of as many synonyms that go with these words?
-Here is a sentence with the missing verb, replace it with your own.
-Here is a popular poem with some words taken out, replace them with your own.
-Here is a simple sentence, now you may describe what it is that made it this way. Here is the sentence: It was the perfect day.
-This piece of writing is missing the quotation marks, can you rewrite it so that the quotation marks are in the right place?
-Look through these books and make a list of different ways that writers write that someone is speaking. Instead of: The girl said, " what could replace "said?"
-This poem has a lot of alliteration, I describe the meaning of alliteration and then they must come up with their own!
-This is an idiom, can you tell me what it means?
-Find the simile and tell me what the item is being compared to.

So, I am also placing some information that is about grammar within this workstation too. I am hoping that my kids will stay busy, and they will learn some stuff that they can use later in writing. We'll see, I hope that it is a little more productive than last year.