4 Station Ideas for Middle School ELA Skills

After you’ve wrapped up a novel or a short story, there is a lot to cover: main idea, theme, plot, and so on. But you don’t always have days to spend dissecting it all. With these middle school ELA stations, you can dig deep into any story – and cover a lot of ground in the classroom.

Prepping for Stations

What intimidates most middle school ELA teachers is the station prep. That’s actually a big reason I created my Literature Stations. The stations are general enough to apply to any story, but they still challenge students knowledge. Instead of prepping new stations every time, you can have a few staples that you reuse with each novel or unit. 

There might be some stations you decide to prep from scratch, though. And I’d recommend not reinventing the wheel. Give old resources a new face-lift inside your station, or take an old station idea and change the skill or concept.

Managing Behavior in Stations

Another big concern in middle school ELA is student behavior in stations. I struggled with this a lot early in my career. Behavior issues will happen, but you can cut back on them in a few ways.

First, make expectations really clear. Students should know exactly what they are supposed to be doing in each station, how long they have, and what work you’ll be collecting. You can even post a timer up to instill a little urgency and keep students on task.

Second, don’t take a back seat. I know it’s tempting to get work done at your desk while students work (I’ve been there), but that’s when the problems arise. Make sure you’re consistently walking around and engaging with students.

Station Ideas for Middle School ELA

Let’s dig into the middle school ELA station ideas. I’ve taken these directly from my Literature Stations, which means you can use (and reuse) these stations with any story, poem, or novel you read. Just prep them once, and you have them again for the future.

#1 Theme

In this station, students will start by reviewing the difference between theme and topic. (That can be a hard one for middle schoolers!) I like to give students a handout of theme and topic examples, so they can see the difference. This handout also helps when they are writing their own theme. I include a theme and topic sheet in the Literature Stations resource.

Next, create some questions students will need to answer about theme. I like to make these into task cards, but you can also create a handout. Again, you want these questions to be generic enough that it can apply to any story, but specific enough to challenge students.

For example, you can ask students, “What did the characters learn from the conflict?” and “Provide examples of text evidence to support your theme.”

#2 Inferences

For this station, it can be a bit harder to prepare inference questions that can apply to any novel. That’s why in the Literature Stations, I created inference questions for story snippets and images.

You can also create specific inference questions about the story or poem students have read. Find a sentence or section from the story, and have students reread it. Then ask them to infer what the character is thinking or a characters motives. This can make for great discussions with the group.

#3 Characterization

Characterization can be weirdly challenging in middle school ELA! Students go from identifying characteristics in elementary to analyzing development in middle school. In this station, students will first review different character terms, such as “flat character” and “potagonist”. I give my students a hand out for this, plus a characterization sheet with adjectives (which you can find in Literature Stations resource).

Then they will answer a few characterization questions about their text. You can ask about character traits, but you also want to take students deeper. Ask questions like, “Identify the protagonist in the text by using text evidence.”

#4 Figurative Language

Figurative language is always a challenging skill in middle school ELA. That’s why I recommend kicking off this station with a vocabulary review. I recommend giving students the definition and an example for each type of figurative language. I include a figurative language reference page in the Literature Stations resource.

Next, it’s time for students to apply what they know to their story. Have them pull examples of a metaphor or personification from the text. Or ask them some deeper questions like, “Find an example of a metaphor, and analyze the author’s purpose.”

Middle School ELA Literature Stations

Want to snag the complete set of middle school ELA literature stations? This resource includes eight stations covering main idea, inferences, point of view, theme, and more! You can apply these stations to any text, which makes it the perfect review at the end of a unit. Prep the stations once, and reuse them each time you read a poem or short story with your class.