Station Teaching in Junior Infants
A reader of my Instagram page asked me today about ideas for station teaching in junior infants. I am a big fan of station teaching but if it is only me and an SNA in the room, then station teaching is used for revision purposes only. I like to teach new learning explicitly and in an old school whole class style, and then I re-teach it to the children who need it or the SNA does. So I would only use station teaching for new learning if it is with support teachers in the room. Station teaching is however a fun way to change things up in the class for the children and to provide revision in a fun and meaningful way. I will also add that every teacher probably approaches station teaching differently and what I am sharing here is merely a suggestion. Remember the golden rule of station teaching first of all is to actually teach how stations work and what your expectations are of station teaching. This will need to be taught and explained many, many times before you start your actual station teaching!
Station one: Phonemic Awareness:
Objective: Help students identify and distinguish between different sounds (initial, medial, and final sounds).
Picture cards or small objects (e.g., cat, bat, car)
Sorting mats or baskets labelled with sounds (e.g., “s”, “f”, “c”)
In this station, students will work together to sort pictures or objects by their beginning sound. For example, they might sort pictures of a “cat” and a “car” into a basket labelled “c.” This helps with phonological awareness.
Reading Station:
Objective: Work on your target sound/ digraph whatever your focus is in class.
Simple picture books or sight word readers
Magnetic letters, letter tiles, or big books with large text
Activity:
In this station, you can do a guided reading session with your group. Read a book together and model how to point to words while reading. For a more hands on approach, try using magnetic letters or letter tiles to build simple words from the story. For non-readers, point to pictures and discuss vocabulary . You could also use this station to practice their readers, decodable ideally but any readers will practice reading skills.
Writing Station/ Fine Motor Skills Station:
Objective: Practice writing skills, letter formation, and simple sight words.
Activity:
This station can focus on letter writing, tracing, practicing sight/ heart words, or drawing pictures and labelling them. You could have students trace letters, practice writing their names, or use word cards to create simple sentences. To make it more fun, you can have them practice forming letters in sand or shaving cream, or if your junior infants are not quite ready for writing then focus on fine motor skills of threading, cutting, picking up objects with a tweezers, etc.
Sight Words/ Heart Words Station:
Objective: Recognise and read sight words.
Create bingo cards with sight words that the students are currently learning. Call out words and have students mark them on their cards. Whoever fills their bingo card first wins. It is so easy and simple but they love it!
Cut and Paste Sentences/ Reading Station
Objective: Teach sentence structure and word order.
Sentence strips with words cut out
Glue sticks
Simple sentences to reconstruct
In this station, students will cut out words from sentence strips and work on putting them together in the correct order. For example, a sentence might be mixed up like so: ‘ mat cat the sat on ” and the students will need to put it together to form it correctly. This may be tricky for junior infants but senior infants would love it.
Word Families Station:
Objective: Identify and practice rhyming words and word families (e.g. at/ ad/it ).
Supplies: word family cards, picture cards for words in the same family (e.g., cat, bat, hat for -at)
Students can match pictures with their corresponding word family, or you can have them create word families by adding different letters to a base word. For example, you might say the word “cat” and ask them to come up with other words that rhyme with it, like “bat” and “hat.”
The ideas above are very simple but remember with infants you don’t have a lot of time per station with their limited attention span! Each station would be 8-10 minutes max I’d say so remember to set your timer!
These phonics posters might help for station teaching :
This CVC workbook is also available: