Reading and Discussing Are Perfect Partners

Although it has officially been spring for several days, we are just beginning to thaw from our challenging winter.  As we come out from the cold, hopefully there is a sense of rejuvenation emerging, too.  Here is a challenge to coincide with your renewal:  INCREASE THE AMOUNT OF STUDENT ACADEMIC CONVERSATION IN YOUR CLASS!

I know that several of you have embraced the idea of students doing close reads. Student discussion and writing have to be a part of the mix.  At the January mini-conference, I shared 40 Ways to Read Text, which was compiled by the ELA section of NCDPI.  I put the strategies together in a LiveBinder for ease of use. Start out tacking speaking and listening skills by studying cards #10-15; they contain simple discussion and questioning strategies. You will find that they are great for different grade levels and pretty much any content area.  

40 Ways to Read Like a Detective: Supporting Text–Centered Inst

Email me if you would like to co-plan or collaborate using these resources!

~Chandra

Speaking and Listening Anchor Standard 1

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL1
Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

Last week, the 6-12 ELA Vertical Team met to discuss chapters from their book study on Teaching Students to Read Like Detectives.  We started by discussing the instructional implications of Speaking and Listening Anchor Standard 1:

• Students need time every day, in every class, to practice their collaborative conversations.
• Students will need to be held accountable for those interactions.
• It is important to provide students with instruction on how to engage in a collaborative conversation.
• Provide students with Sentence Starters
• Have students develop Rules of Conversation

Later we tried out two speaking and listening activities.  Try these in your classroom to build students up towards mastery of that first S&L anchor standard:

Facts in Five 

1. Have students individually generate a personal list of the five most important concepts or facts they have learned about the topic being studied or a list of five predictions, concerns, or areas of interest related to their learning.
2. Have student move into groups of five.
3. Have the group reach consensus on the five most important facts or concepts and clarify their rationale for selecting each.
4. Have each group present their selections and the rationale for each selection to the larger group.
5. Lead a discussion about the content identified, the similarities and differences and the process.
6. Post the choices on the bulletin board for later examination.

Another version of this activity is the 1-3-6 Protocol.

Inside-Outside Circle

It is a Kagan structure summarizing technique that gets students up and moving.  It provides a way to get students who normally would not talk to interact with others.

1. After students read a section of text, the teacher divides the group into two concentric circles containing the same number of students.  Students in the inside circle face a partner standing in the outside circle.
2. Students from the inside circle share something with their partner.
3. Students then reverse their role.
4. The teacher controls the timing, e.g. "Outside circle, it's your turn to share for one minute."
5. The inside circle needs to rotate and the students turn to face their new partner and share.

Inside-Outside Circle engages all students simultaneously and allows the teacher to increase or decrease the number of different pairings that occur. 

~Chandra

NowComment

Many of us know how to use Google Docs for online annotation.  It works, but there is an even better tool: NowComment.

Here is a video on the basics:

Some advantages of NowComment over other annotating sites:

• Two panes scroll independently, allowing better focus on flow of text, video, images, and comments.
• Annotations always appear to the right of text, never blocking the text.
• Teacher options control precise access dates when the text can be read, and when comments can be added.  The same time controls can be used to hide classmates' comments from individual students until a specified time; thus, students in the first round of annotation will not be able to simply parrot the comments of peers, nor will they be swayed by what anyone else has said.
• Comments can be sorted by user which allows for easy assessment, or for students to the locate the responses of select peers.
• Notification options can be customized, allowing you to schedule the "feed" from the site, and "Update" lets you stay informed of every single comment that is added.
• In addition to the two-pane view, a combined view aggregates both panes into a narrative timeline, easily allowing you to note which lines and paragraphs receive the most annotation.
• The number of simultaneous viewers/annotators doesn't seem to be an issue; according to the site, over one hundred users have accessed the same document concurrently without a problem.

Some uses for NowComment:

• Students can upload their own writing to engage peers in discussion.  Microsoft Word works extremely well in the interface.
• Many classic works of literature are now available in the public domain online at sites such as Project Gutenberg, providing teachers a huge list of texts.  Mashable also has some online texts.
• NowComment is especially useful for leaving responses regarding images and videos.

~Chandra

CNN Student News

CNN Student News is a ten-minute, commercial-free, daily news program designed for middle and high school classes.  The show, along with its curriculum found on the companion website, offer an easy way to address Common Core Speaking and Listening Standards for secondary students.  Transcripts are also available, which can be used to promote reading comprehension.

The "Daily Curriculum" includes:
Key Concepts--highlight topics that students will hear in each day's news
Fast Facts Questions--assess what facts students have gathered and how well they were listening or reading
Discussion Questions--designed to promote critical thinking and written
Media Literacy Question of the Day--help student examine media messages and their delivery

Below is an image of today's (March 10, 2014) Daily Curriculum .  <--Click the link to get to live site.

Teachers can sign up for their free Daily Email, which offers information on the major stories CNN Student News will cover that day.  Remember that CNN Student News is a news program that presents current events and issues in the world.  It is strongly advised that you preview each program before showing students, as you are the best judge of the appropriateness of its news content for your specific class.

~Chandra