Each day during Guided Reading, the students have a variety of word work activities that they must complete. Those activities include creating foldables to retell their leveled readers, doing word wall puzzles with sentences, word finds, etc. After completing those mini-lessons based on our whole group word work lessons, they may choose a literacy station. Our main rule for literacy stations is that no matter what station you choose, you must doing some sort of reading and writing. One of the students' favorite stations is Creation Station. In this station there are a variety of art books along with paint, scissors, glue, chalk, etc. There are often thematic props in this station as well to help the students brainstorm story ideas that they can illustrate. Below is an example of a student writing a story about the ocean using various ocean animal toys. He used the toys to act out the story and then wrote about it. He later illustrated it. I love how he started the story with "Once upon a time..."