If you’re anything like most middle school ELA teachers in May, you’re basically running on caffeine, countdowns, and sheer willpower. 🏃♀️✨
Students are distracted, the summer buzz is real, and you’re out here trying to teach literally anything without resorting to bribing them with snacks (again). 🍫
That’s why these mystery-themed ELA stations are my lifeline in May.
Not only do the May classroom stations keep students engaged (because who doesn’t love a good mystery? 🔎), but they’re also designed with differentiated instruction and lots of choice in mind.
There are 12 total stations across fiction, nonfiction, and paired poetry — all tied together with the perfect amount of suspense and wonder to survive these last wild weeks.
A few tips to make stations even easier right now:
- Accountability without grading it all yourself: Assign one student per group to act as the “station teacher” using the answer keys for immediate feedback, or use spot checks where you check in with individual students while groups are working.
- Student choice for the win: Students collaborate at the station, but ultimately choose the question, prompt, or task card they personally want to be responsible for. 👏
- You decide how much they do: Stations are designed with MORE than enough material. You pick and choose how much your students need based on your available time. There’s no rule about students needing to do every single item in every single station.
- If your classes are ginormous, you may need more than four stations. What I do (and absolutely recommend!) is to double up on your stations. So instead of having 8 students in each of the four stations (that’s a recipe for disaster), have 8 stations with 4 students in each one. Have two reading stations, two writing stations, two vocabulary stations, and two grammar stations. Totally fine!
- If you have very short class periods and / or struggling students who are reading multiple grade levels below where they should be), then read the passage aloud together before jumping into the stations.
*** Stations can be used in any order, so it doesn’t matter which one students start with.
Here’s how my mystery collection of May stations works:
Fiction Station: The Fifth Face
Students read my original 1-page short story written in the first-person point-of-view about a group of four friends who snap a group selfie and discover an unexplained “fifth face” in their digital photo. Now for this story, there actually is a logical explanation, but with the cliffhanger ending, students get to argue discuss what the most likely logical reason could be for this mysterious fifth face. lt’s designed to make students think, infer, and engage.
Now rather than making this one-page passage just one station, we’re going to get four stations-worth of practice materials out of the short story. This ensures that students are doing exactly what we want them to do: re-reading, deep reading, close reading of a text. Students will use the same passage for all the stations: reading, writing, vocabulary, and grammar/punctuation.
Here’s what that looks like >> Four stations based on the ONE short story passage so that as students move from station to station, they’re not reading a whole new story each time. The stations aren’t random, and they’re not trying to digest a whole new passage just to get through, say, a vocabulary practice activity.
📖 Reading Station:
- Students analyze the short 1-page story, full of dialogue and elements of setting!
- Students respond in small group purposeful talk to eight reading comprehension questions aligned to both TEKS and CCSS, covering inference, characterization, theme, and text evidence.
- Questions are standards-based + open-ended. They require students to revisit the passage (and yes, I provide “suggested answers” for the teacher to refer to, whether that’s the actual classroom teacher or whether that’s a “student teacher” from within the group itself):
- What inferences can you make about Will’s personality based on his reaction at the end?
- What role does the setting (outside the carnival / fair’s parking lot) play in making the mystery believable for the characters?
✍🏽Writing Station:
- Typically, I use the same reading discussion questions again in the writing station to maximize the time that students get to read, discuss, and own the academic, domain-specific terminology they encounter. It also incentivizes them to do the reading and to do the writing, knowing they’ll have to reuse what they’ve already worked on in a future station
- But this time, for the mystery writing station, I’m not doing that. This time, students have a collection of creative writing prompts to choose from. I offer six, with imaginative prompts like:
- A Different Perspective: Rewrite the story from the point of view of the mysterious person in the photo. Who is it? Why is this person there? Does this person realize they’ve been seen?
- Theories & Explanations: What else could have happened in the story? Is there more than one logical explanation for the mysterious person in the photo? What seems most possible to you? Defend your theory with evidence from the text.
- Fear Factor: What makes unexplained events in life seem fearful? Write a story about a time that something creepy or mysterious happened to you, but then it turned out there really was a logical explanation.
- In order to ensure students are completing their own work here and just copying what one student in the group is writing, I write on the Student Instruction Card that they are to choose their own prompt from the collection.
- It is SO helpful to make sure they know to set a timer for 5 minutes to talk about their prompts with each other for planning and for idea generation, and then they get to use the rest of the station time to actually write.
- And if you stick to having about 4 students per group as I mentioned earlier, there will always be more prompt choices than there are students.
- Do I grade all these writing prompts? No. At other times in class throughout the month, like when I’m teaching a specific grammar, punctuation, or sentence structure lesson, I have students put whatever skill we’re reviewing into practice by having them go back to their station writing prompts to implement that lesson. In other words, we use and reuse their writing from these stations for all kinds of other lessons in class—lessons outside of the stations.
📝 Vocabulary Station:
- Using 8 words from the passage, students complete a fill-in-the-blank context clues practice that supports comprehension through task cards (Printable + Google slides versions).
- The vocabulary task cards look like this, and students are able to revisit the short story to see another in-context example of how each term is used (since the task card sentences aren’t exactly the same as the ones used in the story):
✍️ Grammar Station:
- Students practice punctuating dialogue, which helps support reading comprehension.
- It’s not about them getting every minute comma or period in the exact right spot on their practice sheets in the station. It’s about students understanding dialogue when they see it, how it supports the events in the story, and the confidence students gain when they see what dialogue looks like in writing so they can apply it to their own writing.
Nonfiction Station: The Mary Celeste Ghost Ship
Students read a two-page nonfiction article about the mysterious disappearance of the entire crew + passengers aboard the Mary Celeste. This mystery has never been solved, and the article students refer to for every station activity prompts lots of discussion, engagement, and close-reading in the most organic way–love this one!
This article is a great little review of the text structure and text features of informational texts: subheadings, cause/effect, chronology, italics, bold fonts, bullets and lists, etc. that writers use strategically to divide and organize content.
📖 Reading Station:
- Students revisit the short 2-page article, and then discuss standards-based task cards with questions like these:
- What kind of tone does the author use to describe the events of the Mary Celeste? Find a sentence that shows this tone.
- If you could add a piece of text evidence (like a diary entry, map, or artifact) to this article, what would you add? How would it change the way readers think about the mystery?
- What details from the article help you understand why the Mary Celeste remains such a famous unsolved mystery?
✍🏽Writing Station:
- Students have five creative writing prompts to choose from. Like the writing stations mentioned already in the fiction set above, students can each choose one prompt–discuss what they’ll write about for five minutes in the station so they get to think first and generate ideas—then write.
- Modification Idea: Provide sentence starters like “Today, something strange happened aboard the ship…”
- Skills Practiced: Creative nonfiction writing, blending fact with imagination, point of view
📝 Vocabulary Station:
- Students advance their vocabulary libraries with mystery-themed words used in the article: preposterous, desolate, abandoned, mysterious, investigators, plausible, navigation, conspiracy, perilous, anomaly
- Remember: It’s pretty fun and motivating for students if you can allow one of them to “be the teacher” and check their own group’s work using your answer key after they’ve finished 🙂 I’ve heard PLENTY of times, “No, wait! Hold on! Don’t check us yet! I think two of these are wrong!” when a fellow group member is about to come borrow my answer key to check the group’s answers!
✍️ Grammar Station:
- Combining sentences! For this station, students get a set of short, choppy sentences about the Mary Celeste ghost ship. Their mission: Combine each set into ONE well-written sentence using conjunctions, commas, transition words, or creative phrasing. In their groups, they decide who is re-writing each sentence so they’re not all doing the same ones. This keeps students engaged and helpful to each other while maintaining their own work responsibilities.
- For extension, students can share the original choppy sentences followed by the “glow-up” they gave them (my students love doing this) which serves to reinforce the connection between reading and writing better sentences.
- Example:
- The Mary Celeste was found abandoned.
- No one ever truly discovered what happened.
- The case became one of history’s greatest mysteries.
- The new “glow-up” sentence⬇
- The Mary Celeste was found abandoned, and since no one ever truly discovered what happened, it became one of history’s greatest mysteries.
You can also extend this into an “Expand and Explain” activity — Have students add one extra detail to each of their combined sentences. (Perfect for early finishers and sneaking in more writing practice without it feeling like more work.)
Poetry Station: Paired Poems — “Who Can See the Wind?” by Christina Rossetti and “Some One” by Walter de la Mare
In this poetry station, students read two short (and very accessible) poems with big mysterious energy.
- “Who Can See the Wind?” by Christina Rossetti explores unseen forces through simple, rhythmic language.
- “Some One” by Walter de la Mare captures the eerie feeling of someone (or something) knocking at the door on a quiet night — but no one is there. 😳
Both poems invite students to dig into theme, tone, mood, figurative language, and inference — all while giving off that delightfully haunting, slightly suspenseful vibe that’s perfect for distracted end-of-year middle schoolers.
These poems are short, sweet, and filled with juicy discussion opportunities. (And spoiler alert: students actually like that they’re short. Shocking, right?) 😂
🔎 Reading Station:
- Students compare and contrast the theme, tone, mood, and figurative language across both poems using the reading discussion task cards.
- Skills Practiced: Comparing texts, identifying theme and tone, analyzing figurative language.
- What central theme do both poems explore? How do the poets express mystery or the unknown in different ways?
- Compare the tone of both poems. Which one feels more imaginative? Which one feels more serious or eerie? Support your answer with text evidence.
- “Some One” uses sound imagery rather than sight or sound imagery — what specific sensory details does this author include, and how do they impact the tone of the poem?
✍️ Writing Station:
- Students respond to a choice board of reflection prompts, such as:
- Which poem did you connect to more and why?
- Imagine you are the “someone” from Some One. What happens next?
- Modification Idea: Offer sentence stems like “The mood of Some One feels ____ because…”
- Skills Practiced: Literary response writing, creative thinking, text-to-self connections
🧠 Vocabulary Station:
- Students study interesting, mood-heavy words pulled directly from the poems like “stillness,” “whisper,” “latches,” and “fluttering” by choosing from one of four tasks that invite them to use their chosen term in a creative way (this is a student favorite as this particular poetry vocabulary station is the same each month, yet a new set of words to choose from keeps it fresh!)
- Skills Practiced: Context clues, vivid imagery, word choice in poetry
🛠️ Grammar Station:
- This is highly interactive, and I typically try to use the same type of poem grammar station each month because I want my students to practice—and become super comfortable with—the grammar and punctuation elements that are unique in most poems.
- This type of station teaches students to make connections between grammar, punctuation, commas, stanzas, lines, sentences, etc. of different forms of poetry. It’s a station they look forward to each month because they know what to do, and it gives them a life-long strategy for approaching poems regardless of the form or style.
- Here’s what students work through in the poetry grammar station:
Love the idea of stations but a little anxious about implementing them?
You have two options:
(2) Or, use the materials whole-class style as part of your spiral review of reading, writing, vocabulary, and grammar that you know you need to be doing anyway… Then, when you’re ready for stations, you’ll have all the items ready to go!
Ready to Level Up Your Stations?
If you want this entire mystery station collection, plus access to themed stations for every month, check out Ready, Set, Stations™! Your students will love them, and you’ll love the simplicity of it all.
Get your PDF + Google slides May stations, and use it this May and every May going forward.
Get the entire done-for-you May set of Ready, Set, Stations™ to cross stations off your to-do list.
