Debbie Diller's "work station" concept is one of the best ways to balance small groups and independent learning in the elementary classroom. Based on the ideas from her book, I designed several components to help me manage work stations in my room. Included in this packet (12 pages) are the following:

- a sample, one-week, four-group schedule
complete with 6 work stations
- a sheet for students to track which
activities they have completed
- "I Can" sheets for each of the work
stations that provide the students with a
set of choices for their independent work
- a set of icons that can be used to set up
a rotation pocket chart

All of these items are Word documents that may be modified by the purchasing teacher to suit the needs of the individual classroom.

Save yourself the time of setting up your work stations and avoid the high cost of a commercial product that does the same thing!