Station Rotation for Secondary Research

I mentioned in my first blog post that my best PD session of 2018 was an hour spent listening to two of my colleagues talk about using Station Rotation in secondary classrooms. Here, I'll explain why it was so darn good.

Being married to a former elementary teacher, I am no stranger to the concept of Station Rotation (or "Centers," as they're calling it in the elementary world these days). I had even been to a session on Station Rotation prior to this one, which is part of the reason I signed up for Katie & Cassie's:I knew there was a way I could use stations in the library, but I didn't quite feel like I could crack it. I hoped listening to them and giving myself another hour to sit with the idea would shake something loose-- and boy, did it! This is how my Station Rotation Research (SRR) approach was born.

As a high school library media specialist, I spend a good deal of time talking to classes about research. How to determine whether sources are credible and sufficiently academic, how to cite sources, how to navigate databases, how to use the library catalog to *gasp* find a book on a given subject.... The sessions are never quite the same, always tailored ever so slightly to meet the needs of a given research or inquiry project. What they all used to have in common, though, was a largely lecture-based approach that resulted in my unending frustration (answering the same questions during independent work time, watching students ignore everything I had said and pull information off a Google results page, etc.).

Enter my Station Rotation breakthough, which I have used (so far) with Health classes researching STDs (one of my favorite projects of the year) and English 10 classes doing Decades research. It goes like this:

• Before I meet with the classes, I pull relevant books and have them on a cart so they're handy.*
• I do a whole-class spiel that includes information on how to locate & navigate our databases, how to generate (or find) citations, and anything else that is relevant to the project (sometimes talking about the differences between databases & websites, primary & secondary sources, etc.). 
• I physically break the class into three groups and have each group rotate through each of three stations. These take one of two forms:
• a database station, a website station**, and a book station; or
• a digital station, a print station, and an instructional station to learn a new digital tool such as a particular presentation software
• Each group gets 10-15 minutes at each of the three stations, and they must conduct their research using the station's designated resource type. With the time remaining at the end of the class, they are free to conduct the rest of their research using whichever resources best meet their needs.***
• I do make them get up and physically move from station to station (in spite of their protestations). I think the act of moving helps get the blood flowing and the brain working, and it helps them mentally transition from one type of resource to the next. 
• Limiting their time and frequently reminding them that their time is limited seems to help keep them more on task.
• I circulate through the stations as I am able to help guide their research.

Thanks to this approach, I have seen an huge increase in students using books for their research. Last year my carefully pre-selected books stayed ignored on their cart while students opted for easily searchable databases (or worse, unfocused Google searches). This year I've actually had students ask if they can keep using the books, and some have even confessed that they prefer book research! You could have knocked me over with a feather. 

You better believe with student responses like that I'm going to keep doing this. 

Some possible future tweaks/goals:

• students at the book station using that time to actually search for their own books using the library catalog (for more individualized research projects).
• students at the website station completing a source evaluation exercise (maybe filling out a CRAAP graphic organizer) and learning about advanced Google search techniques.
• students at the database station learning which databases are best for what types of research and determining what best meets their specific research needs instead of my telling them which databases to go to.

Bring on the new semester!

*I was already in the habit of pre-selecting books for these projects.
**Many of our classes use pathfinders of predetermined web sources
***We have 4 90-minute blocks a day, so I'm fortunate enough to have time to do all of this in one class period. If we were on a regular period schedule, I would probably do the class spiel on day one and the stations on day two.