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Bullseye! Determining Important Details in Text

3/21/2018

How do you decide what is most important in a passage? Most of us do it without thinking. We have somehow picked up the ability through the years, without being aware of the metacognitive process in which we engage.

For some students, we need to be very explicit about this thinking, making it visible and concrete for them. The BullsEye Strategy is one approach that has been successful for me.

Draw 3 circles on the board, forming a target, and mark the inside circle 100, the middle circle 50 and the outer circle 25. The center circle should be large enough to accommodate just three paper darts or arrows.
Ask students to talk with a partner about any connections they have to this image.
Share the learning target for the day - I can evaluate the importance of ideas in a text and determine the most important.
Give each student a paper arrow or dart. You can either preprint these (laminate if you will use again) or have students quickly cut an arrow shape from a sticky note.
Tell students that you will read the text aloud. If they hear or see something that might be important, they are to raise their hand.
Begin reading and call on a student to share the important idea. Have them write it on their paper arrow and ask them to come up to the target and place it where they think it belongs. (Students almost always place it in the center. Even if you disagree with their decision, leave it there so that they can have an “aha” moment in the next step.)
Once the center is full, explain to students that not every idea can be the most important. Ask them to talk with peers about what to do, which one to move. Students will begin to re-evaluate and move ideas around as they accumulate more details on the arrows.
When the section of reading is finished, review the three ideas in the center of the target. From these three, guide students to generate a main idea or topic.

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Rock, Paper, Scissors as a Teaching Tool

3/12/2018

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When teachers incorporate movement into a lesson, students are more engaged and the content becomes more memorable. Recently, I was talking with teachers in South Carolina about how I have used the game “Rock, Paper, Scissors”. Kalli Queen, 5th grade teacher at Mount Lebanon Elementary School shared this clever idea for how to use the game to introduce the branches of government.

1. Briefly review rock, paper, scissors and play once altogether (to ensure no "extras" are used)

2. Have students pair off randomly and play rock, paper, scissors for 2 minutes, recording their results each round. They must tally which category wins each time in a triple t-chart.

3. After the time is up, have students total their tallies for each category. They then meet with two other pairs (creating groups of 6) and compare their totals. The new groups then combine their totals (making it easier to combine a class total).

4. Collect the group totals into a class total and create a quick bar graph on the board.

5. Have the class discuss results, guiding the discussion toward how no single category outshines the others; all are within a reasonable margin of the others.

6. Explain that this is how checks and balances work (no single branch of government is more powerful than the others--all branches have power over one but must succumb to the other i.e., rock can beat scissors, but not rock).

7. With titles of the three branches displayed, have the class brainstorm how each category of the game relates to the government. Guide them to agree to the following:
rock = executive branch "the buck stops here" (move hand down in a fist to bang on desk, saying "executive")
paper = legislative branch--writing and passing the laws (hold up one hand as if it were paper and act as if you were writing on it with the other hand)
scissors = judicial branch--cutting up anything unconstitutional (hold up one hand as if it were paper and act as if you were cutting it with the other hand)

Thanks to Kalli for sharing this idea. Students who struggle are lucky to have teachers, like Kalli, who develop creative ways to help comprehension and memory.

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Clue Word Tip Sheet

3/5/2018

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Some students struggle with showing their knowledge on comprehension assessments, simply because they don't understand key words in the question. Depending on what the purpose of the assessment is, teachers might find it appropriate to provide students with a Clue Word Tip Sheet. If the tip sheet is used frequently during class discussions, practice assessments and homework assignments, students will improve their understanding of these clue words. While they may not be able to use the tip sheet during all assessments, regular practice will increase the likelihood of skill transfer.

Click here for my Clue Word Tip Sheet.

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Bullseye! Determining Important Details in Text

Rock, Paper, Scissors as a Teaching Tool

Clue Word Tip Sheet

Anne M. Beninghof

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