1/27/10

Strategies That Work Session 2

Things you need to bring to each session:

  1. Daybook to keep your ideas, papers, and thoughts in (Folder and composition notebook OR 3 ring with everything)
  2. Strategies That Work Book
  3. Writing Utensil

Consider:

  1. A type of notebook for students to stay organized
  2. How to use it for EVERYTHING…maybe changing each quarter

Group Setting: (Think ahead about the grouping of your students to help guide the types of questions you ask)

  1. Natural setting groups: Naturally going where you chose. (Heterogeneous, with friends, people you are comfortable with)
  2. Have Criteria: For what students should be doing during their group time
  3. Will look at “Clock Buddies” and best ways to pair students for academic activities

Think Big:

  1. Brain Drain: Can be used if it has been a while since you have talked about a topic and you want to go back to it.
  2. Students are given an amount of time to write whatever they remember before they discuss. Everything you are thinking positive and negative about a focus related to that topic.
  3. Allow students time to share and discuss. Students only share what they want to share.
  4. As a teacher you need to warn them you are or are not going to look at it later. (ppt. with our focus to discuss for today’s session)
  5. Students can add to their brain drain as others are talking.
  6. Have an auditory signal and make sure the children know what that means.
  7. Come back and discuss with the class.
  8. Fashion Show, Consumer Literacy, Textbooks, Children books, Fast Food Menus (make connections), Creating meals (integrated curriculum), Different vocab. strategies (index cards), Video (make a connection, mainstream, spark emotion, had a purpose), Made different resources the students could access later available and put them in students hands, investigating with questioning there wasn’t a final definitive answer. Grouping levels didn’t matter- lesson was a social event, he created a natural setting.
  9. Go back to the last assignment to refresh and review, use what you used last time. (Visualizing: using students/ making a personal connection).
  10. Make classroom environmental friendly. Get students motivated.
  11. Use movements, gestures, visuals
  12. Think about the students and their brains. We have to wear “the tootoos, the crowns,etc”. Step up and get kids thinking about what we want them thinking about.
  13. Students should be moving about every 20 minutes. Whether from one grouping section to another or any other type of movement.
  14. Many of the things that are in this book we are doing. It’s about taking things a step further with them.
  15. Making Tracks: Use your sticky notes and highlight information that you find important while reading. Any burning thing you want to share, any burning quote leave tracks.

Quotes:

Pg. 13 Purpose for reading…

Pg. 18 Sadly, by fifth grade, kids questions practically disappear.”

Pg. 13 2nd para:“Getting readers to think whenthey read, to develop an awareness of their thinking, and to actively use the knowledge they glean are the primary goals of the comprehension instruction.”

Pg. 13 4th para:“Getting the meaning of something written by using the eyes to interpret its characters.”

Pg. 21 para 4:“Whenever I read anything I seemed to identify as much with the act of composition as with the story.”

**Pg. 26-27“The fact is all readers space out when they read.” Understand the reason why we are doing this. Everybody’s mind wonders, but students don’t know what to do when they DO wander. This book gives you ways to teach strategies to overcome that and self monitor. Allow the students brain to “go there” without totally getting off. (How do we keep them motivated?)

Things we need to enhance Comprehension

  1. Lower Level novel sets
  2. Lower Level History books (i.e. The Middle Ages)

For Next Time:

  1. Read chap. 4 and 5
  2. Try some grouping structures/ environment issues in your classroom to enhance student motivation and reflect in your “daybook”
  3. Focus on 1 addition to your classroom environment that will promote student engagement and inner conversations

4. Next sharing session is on Wednesday, February 24 at 2:20.