Reflection: Student Interviews

Interview with Thanh and Beatriz:

Why do we do work stations?

T: To know words better.

B: So we could learn more.

Why do we work in partners for work stations?

T: If we get stuck, someone can help us on that.

B: I think the same thing as Thanh said.

How do feel about work stations?

T: comfortable about what we’re doing

B: Good. We get a lot done.

What do you like about work stations?

T: Learn a lot and it’s fun.

B: There’s some stations that help you—like if you’re learning to read a word, and they ask you on a test to make a word, there’s a station that helps you learn how to do that.

Which is your favorite?

T: Contraction memory game because I like contractions.

B: I like contraction matching because you get to find the word and the matching word.

What don’t you like about work stations? à Is there a work station you don’t like?

T: The station I don’t like is word families—because we learned it last year in second grade. Maybe other people didn’t learn it in a different school.

B: Word families because we learned that last year.

Alex and Abigail:

Why do we do work stations?

Ab: To help our learning.

Al: To learn more stuff that you don’t know.

Why do we work in partners for work stations?

Ab: If there’s 2 partners that don’t understand and 2 that do understand, the partners that do understand can do it on their own but the partners that don’t can do it on their own so there are partners where one person does know and one doesn’t so they can work together.

Al: We can help each other out, if you don’t know something you can ask your partner “Can you help me on this one?”

What do you like about work stations?

Al: I like that we learn more, like when I don’t know stuff from the work stations I could learn it.

Ab: We could learn stuff we really don’t understand.

Which is your favorite:

Al: Synonyms and antonyms because I like to do it because it’s fun to me.

Ab: same because I can learn which ones are synonyms and which are antonyms.

How do feel about work stations?

Ab: Feel like we’re learning more in our brains

Al: I feel good. Feels good to me because I like learning about work stations.

What don’t you like about work stations? à Is there a work station you don’t like?

Al: I only like synonyms and antonyms (listed all the others as ones he doesn’t like). The others ones are hard to me.

Ab: I don’t like when people are loud because I can’t concentrate. (none) 

Reflection: 

I didn't realize how much students were enjoying work stations. Following these interviews, I have had to cancel work stations a few times in order to have time to prepare for, take and reflection on a benchmark assessment. Each time, I noticed students expressing disappointment that we were not doing work stations. It is hard for me to decipher if they love work stations because they enjoy working with other people or the freedom to sometimes let the conversation wander...or because they genuinely enjoy the activities. Perhaps I'm being cynical, but I wonder if their responses to my question "What do you like about work stations?" is actually how they feel or what they think I want to hear. As I have looked through their work, I am noticing which stations are more productive (Past, Present, Future sort, for example) and which are less (Build a Super Sentence). The next step is for me to look at the work they produce from each station. I want to look at it independently and then look for the traces of it in their writing. For example, I will look at their language arts notebooks to see what they are producing during work stations but I also want to read their writing looking specifically for the skills they practice during work stations. I could also, perhaps, create a formative assessment of the skills they practice during work stations to see what they are retaining from each station. I do want to keep the partner work time in the day--I understand why they enjoy time to work together. When I think about professional development and the days in which it is lots of information being thrown at me verses the days I have time to work, think and process with my team, they feel very different and it makes sense that the students would need time like this, as well.