Station Rotation: Facilitating Differentiation

Station rotation can be used to support our MTSS model. Let's look at some of the ways this instructional strategy can be leveraged to support differentiation.

Individual or Small Group Interventions
The station rotation model gives teachers an opportunity to meet with individual students or small groups of students for interventions. This typically happens in two main ways:

1. The teacher leads a group of students, usually grouped together by academic need, while other students work in groups.
2. The teacher does not lead a group, but rather monitors student work in all the groups. When the teacher sees a student needing help or enrichment, he or she can pull the student aside or enter the group to provide the needed intervention in real time.

Typically, a teacher will group students intentionally during rotations. There are several meaningful ways to group students to support differentiation.

1. By ability--This allows students to collaborate in stations with appropriately leveled work.
2. By learning style--This allows students to collaborate in stations with tasks that align to their preferred learning style, thus increasing the chance for success.
3. By interests--This allows teachers to differentiate the topics to better appeal to learners' interests, thus potentially increasing motivation within the group.

Individually assigned work at independent work stations

When students are asked to work independently at a station, the tasks can be individually assigned to meet a student's individual needs.

1. Seesaw--When teachers use a 1:1 QR login in their classroom, they can individually assign leveled assignments to students. When students log in, they only see the activities specifically assigned to them. These activities can be created by the teacher or pulled from the Seesaw Activities library. 
2. Schoology--Teachers can individually assign work to leveled groups of students, so students only see the work assigned to them. The teacher could also create leveled folders with activities inside each designed for a group of learners, or leveled versions of the same activity.

Seesaw

Schoology

Create leveled tasks at each station

Another option is for a teacher to provide leveled activities aligned to a learning scale at each station. Based on a pre-assessment or teacher assignment, students would know which level of activity to complete in each station. A benefit of this option is that if the activity becomes too easy for the student, he or she can make the choice to move up to the next level.

In this example, students have access to three similar tasks in a station, and they choose the activity matched to their level on the learning scale. If they master a lower level, they are able to try the more difficult next level.

In this example from our fall professional development, teachers were asked to review resources based on their placement on our blended learning scale.