As another amazing school year comes to a close, most educators are counting the days and the minutes until summer break arrives. However, some educators are reflecting on the past nine or so months and how to make the next school year even better.

I asked one of these reflective practitioners, Ashley Sumrell, Curriculum Resource Teacher at Steele Creek Preparatory Academy, to share her strategy of beginning the school year using station rotations. Thank you, Ashley, for always looking for ways to make learning engaging and fun for ALL learners!

Guest Blogger: Ashley Sumrell

Have you ever looked around the room during a traditional beginning-of-the-school-year, pre-planning session?

Many times, teachers are sitting and listening while someone speaks to them. The longer the teachers sit there the more you will notice zoning out.

Teachers understand there are many things they need to receive and plan to make the school year successful. However, if teachers are being instructed to utilize best teaching practices, then why have them “sit and get” information during pre-planning? The “sit and get” model is a thing of the past. Itis not engaging, is not a best teaching practice, and frankly is
boring.

Look at the person in Exhibit A, he has probably been sitting and getting information for about 15-20 minutes. He still has a slight smile on his face, but his eyes are starting to glaze over. Then, you have the person in Exhibit B. He is a perfect example of what teachers look like if they are “sitting and getting” between 45-60 minutes. Can you imagine what a teacher would look like if the meeting lasted longer than 30 minutes? It is obvious that these two teachers are not
receiving any of the information being presented to them because they are not engaged.

A New Way of Training Teachers Using Station Rotations

To eliminate “zoning out” and to model what is expected of teachers in their own classroom, a plan was created for using station rotations in beginning of the year teacher training and pre-planning. The inspiration for this type of training came about when Ms. Glenna Tabor, creator of the Tabor Rotations Framework, came to our campus to meet with every teacher. Over 95% of them were fully engaged, wanted to stay longer, and were asking when she could come back.

Ms. Tabor “walks the talk!” In all of her trainings she uses a variety of games, visuals, and hands-on learning practices. Our teachers learned new strategies they could take back to their classrooms and use immediately. They understood the importance of what they were learning AND were having fun! This is something our teachers not only needed but wanted as well – to have training that is beneficial and
engaging.

I thought about how we want to fully immerse our school using the Tabor Framework and how we could organize it for teachers. So, why not start from the beginning of the year by modeling what the framework looks like during pre-planning using a few simple steps? I created this infographic with four simple steps.

Step 1:

Make a list of all the topics that need to be covered during beginning-of-the-new-year, pre-planning. This list does not have to be in any particular order. Below is an example of the content explored by our school each new year.

*Pre-Planning Topics
*Leadership Roles
*Grading Policies
*HR Forms and Procedures

Step 2:

Sort them based on how this information would be best received. Some topics make sense to do them in whole group
settings while others can be done in grade level groups. The topics that can be done based on each grade level become your stations for teachers to rotate through.

*Whole Group Topics Station Rotation Topics
*Leadership Roles Grading Policies
*HR Forms and Procedures

Step 3:

Place them into your pre-planning agenda based on which day that topic will be covered. Below you will find an example for two days of Pre-Planning.

Step 4:

Plan and make engaging activities that go with each session. Use this Pre-Planning Station Activity Template to guide you in activity creation. These could include games about the topic, gallery walks, quiz-quiz trades, or other methods to help engage teachers. As you will see below in the example, at our school we want students to have a task to do from the moment they walk in the room.

We have bell ringers each morning for teachers to complete during pre-planning. We use Morning Meetings in K-5 and Advisory in Middle School. So, we purposely plan to start each day with those items as well because they are items that teacher will be using in their classrooms.

Again, teaching has come so far from the model of sit here, listen to what we are saying to you, and absorb as much as you can. It is important that we model what we expect during our meetings with teachers, and it starts at the beginning of the year with pre-planning.

We should not only model what we expect, but also be intentional, purposeful, and strategic when planning meetings with teachers. 

How are you going to incorporate station rotations into your next school year? Ashley [asumrell@steelecreekprep.org] and I [glenna@glennatabor.com] would love to hear from you!