Category:

Brain Bursts

7/18/2014

Keep students actively attending during read aloud or lectures with these Brain Bursts!

Combine a brain image with a burst image, print, laminate and adhere to a wooden craft stick.

Explain to students that their brains have bursts of electricity when they make connections and think about new ideas.

Then give each student a Brain Burst and ask them to use their dry erase markers to write the concept of the day on the brain. In this example, students were learning about similes.

They kept the Brain Bursts on their desks, and were encouraged to raise it high whenever they heard a simile. During read aloud time there were several, but the teacher also used them in her conversation throughout the day.

Students were paying attention and excited to have the opportunity to share their brain burst with the class.

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Learning Time Line

6/19/2014

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A Learning Time Line is a wonderful way to capture learning over time or throughout a unit of instruction. Because research supports the use of non-linguistic approaches to capture and review concepts, I have used this strategy with students in the past. This week I decided to try it with adults. During a 3 day professional learning workshop on co-teaching, we documented our learning with words and pictures on a scroll of chart paper hung on the wall. I love no-prep strategies like this one!

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Can your students dig deeper?

4/7/2014

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Perhaps because it is snowing outside my window, I am feeling an intense craving for sunshine and the beach. Local stores seem to be stocking the shelves with the fun toys of summer, so I thought I would share with you a strategy for getting students to dig a little deeper.

Obtain a plastic beach bucket and a handful of plastic shovels. On the scoot of each shovel, adhere a piece of paper with one of the following higher level thinking prompts.

Do you see any patterns?
Can you take a different perspective?
Have you noticed any trends?
Are there any ethical issues to consider?
What relationships are obvious? subtle?
Can you make connections across content areas?

Place the shovels in the bucket and carry it with you as you wander the room. If you find a student who is finished early, or just needs some higher level stimulation, ask them to take a shovel from the bucket and
dig deeper into the content.

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How do you compare 2 informational texts?

2/4/2014

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How do you compare 2 informational texts? One of the anchor standards for reading expects students to be able to analyze two or more texts on similar topics to compare approaches the authors take. My co-teachers and I worked on this standard with our students this week, and, as usual, I wanted to be put a visual/tactile spin on it.

We distributed pieces of yarn, about 12 inches in length, to each student, and broke the students into two groups. They read a passage in the history book, and then another document detailing the same event in history. The second text was chosen in part because it portrays the event with different facts.

After reading each text, we asked a series of questions designed to encourage students to read closely. For example, “Who was Edward H. Moffat?” This historical figure is described very differently in each text. We then asked the students to use their piece of yarn to connect the location in each text so that we could compare. This forced them to be very focused on the textual evidence, before beginning to draw inferences. We then had robust discussion about why the authors chose to describe the person so differently.

The yarn served a great purpose of focusing students on specific evidence, and engaging tactile learners during a difficult reading task. Simple yet effective!

PS Some students chose to tape the yarn in place using restickable highlighter tape.

image by Lori Ann mamawit.wordpress.com

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Activating Prior Knowledge - Helping students do it independently!

1/21/2014

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Activating prior knowledge is a common educational phrase. Almost any teacher will tell you the importance of getting students to make connections to their background knowledge before they learn about a new topic or read a new story.

Recently I searched for ideas on how to activate prior knowledge. Everything I found included the teacher doing the activating of the students - an external event, rather than students learning how to activate their own brains. We need our students to be able to do this independently! During standardized assessments, teachers are not able to prompt students with questions, KWL charts, and other hints about the topic. During most authentic learning situations, I don't have someone saying to me "What do you Know about this topic?"

So how does one activate one's own knowledge? What do you do when faced with a topic you know little about? I reflected on my own experience and then developed a tool to help my students. The Prior Knowledge Spinner provides 6 questions to stimulate metacognition, particularly as it relates to prior knowledge. I provided students with the topic, then had them spin and answer the questions.

I also created a second version with visual prompts to help our English Learners or other students who needed some additional support.

Our goal is to have students use the spinners frequently enough that the questions become embedded in their metacognitive processes. This will include a transition phase when we fade out the actual spinners and encourage a visualization.

Interested in these tools? Email me a request at anne@ideasforeducators.com and I will be happy to send them to you.

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Pass the Plate

12/10/2013

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Pass the Plate is a quick, engaging way to have students generate lots of ideas about a topic.

1.Put students into groups of 3 or 4 and provide each group with a plastic picnic plate and a transparency marker. (Paper plates work, too.)

2. Tell students that they will be given a word to write in the middle of the plate, and then they will pass the plate around their group, adding ideas, for 2 minutes. They will be given points for every idea on the plate, (I usually give 1000) and bonus points for any idea they have that no other group wrote down (5000.)

3. Rules for Pass the Plate - spelling doesnot count, they may not use resources (other than each other), and they may not skip a turn.

This photo is of a group of teachers playing Pass the Plate at one of my workshops. I provided the word "big" and they had to generate synonyms for the word. Teachers, like students, enjoyed the friendly competition and were very engaged with the activity.

When you are finished sharing ideas, simply hold the plate under the water faucet and it will rinse right off!

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Math Discussion Chips

10/23/2013

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The Common Core State Standards in math expect students to be able to explain their thinking and discuss mathematical concepts. This is quite a challenge for most students, but especially for those who struggle with language as English Learners or students with disabilities.

Discussion Poker Chips are something I have used successfully for literature circle discussions. Last week we tried them out in an inclusive, co-taught Algebra 1 class for the first time.

Students were placed in groups of 4 and provided with a Math Discussion Board. This is available for download here. (Modify to fit the level of your students.)

Each student was given 3 poker chips of a single color (1 student had green, 1 student had red, 1 student had blue and 1 student had white.)

My co-teacher and I modeled how to use the chips to have a conversation while working together through a set of problems.

We explained that the goal was to use the vocabulary represented on the board. If a student used the word, he could place his chip on that space. Students were encouraged to cover as many of the spaces as they could – just a hint of competition!

While it took a little while for the conversation to get started, we began to see students who never talk participating in the discussion! I credit three aspects of the activity – the symbols on the board serve as cues for students who can’t think of what to say, the poker chips add a tactile component that heightens alertness and the friendly competition between groups provided some motivation.

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Stop for Popcorn

10/15/2013

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Video is a wonderful media for engaging students and providing them close to real-life experiences. However, its effectiveness is maximized if students are given a viewing purpose and a concrete way to capture their ideas.

Today I took yellow sticky notes and cut them to look (a bit) like popcorn. We gave each student one and explained that when you go to the movies, you take time out to munch on popcorn – just like we would stop during the video to make a note on our popcorn stickies.

A specific prompt was provided on the board. In this biology class, we wanted to students to complete an analogy based on ideas in the video, so the prompt was:

Cell: city

______:_______

After viewing the video students came up to the board and placed their popcorn, on which they had written an analogy, in a large popcorn tub that I had drawn. Discussion followed.

How do you keep students engaged and responsible for learning while watching videos?

Photo by Enokson, Flickr

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Teaching Students How to Read Infographics

9/9/2013

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Infographics, the newest form of internet wallpaper, are complex representations of information. Because they seem to be popping up everywhere, students will need to be able to read and comprehend them. Yet, the characteristics and layout of infographics are varied - some more readable than others.

To help students approach these complex text forms, we printed out several types for them to explore. Each infographic was placed inside a page protector. Students used dry-erase markers to mark various elements of the info graphics. (You can do something similar with iPads and annotation apps.)

For example:

Place a star next to the very first thing that catches your eye.
Place a circle around the one word that best describes the topic.
Place a square around important quantitative information
Draw an arrow to point out the best graphic that helped you to understand the topic.
Put a smiley face next to the data source.
Draw an arrow showing the best pathway to follow to read all of the important information.

Students were able to realize that not all infographics read from left to right, top to bottom; not all infographics have sources listed and therefore may not be reliable; some infographics use much more effective visuals to make a point, and some have too much information! At the end of the lesson, students had to choose which infographic they are thought was the best and

If you would like to use some of the infographics we used in the lesson, you can find them at this weebly site.

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Reading Comprehension Booster

7/23/2013

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After more than a year in development, my Reading Comprehension Booster iPad app is now available on the App Store! Many of my regular readers have attended my workshops and seen the app in the early stages. I welcomed your input and changed the design to include your suggested features. Testing with children of various ages also improved our design to the point where I believe it will be an asset to any literacy program.

What makes my app different? I have reviewed many apps tagged as reading comprehension apps. What I found was that most of these provide students with text to read and then answer questions. It seems to me that this assesses reading comprehension but doesn’t work on the skills needed to improve reading comprehension! Reading Comprehension Booster targets the foundational elements of understanding fiction and non-fiction and engages students in interactive responses to these. The app is also fully accessible - children can respond with audio recordings, drawings, text and drag and drop.

Click here for a video overview of the app, or read below for the specific details. If you feel that it is worthwhile, I would appreciate you spreading the word for me through your contacts, blogs and other networks. I will also welcome your feedback as we work on updates. I already have ideas for adding more non-fiction features in a future release.

Boost reading comprehension with this set of interactive tools! Based on the idea of paper bookmarks, each booster encourages the child to record responses, while they are reading, based on a specific reading focus. No more wondering if your child or student was actually paying attention while s/he was reading!

Booster bookmarks were designed by an expert in the field of differentiated instruction, and are based on essential instructional elements identified in literacy, brain and learning research. Each booster has a variety of interactive options to tap into different ability levels and interests. Users can read or listen to directions, draw, type, drag or record responses, and much more. Children can choose from Characters, Connections, Story Seeds and other bookmarks, or use several simultaneously. Children can easily email their work to a parent or teacher for review and discussion.

Features

•    Interactive tools to increase reading engagement and comprehension

•    Each bookmark provides cues to prompt thinking

•    For beginning readers through early teens

•    Allows for multiple users for classrooms sharing iPads

•    A range of response options increases accessibility

•    Data can be emailed to parents, teachers, RtI specialists, IEP team members

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<<Previous

Brain Bursts

Learning Time Line

Can your students dig deeper?

How do you compare 2 informational texts?

Activating Prior Knowledge - Helping students do it independently!

Pass the Plate

Math Discussion Chips

Stop for Popcorn

Teaching Students How to Read Infographics

Reading Comprehension Booster

Anne M. Beninghof

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