Student Led Strategy Groups

Our class has been working hard on learning how to quote from text when answering text based questions. I've really focused on this skill with my struggling readers.  I have a group of 8 kiddos who really need intensive support in order to be successful this year.  Together, we are reading Because of WInn Dixie (love!) and answering text based questions using Lovin Lit's Citing Text Evidence Notebooking Lesson.

Here you can see some of the work my kiddos did with this notebook (although, I had to tweak the lesson because I didn't get all of the copies I needed from the office in time!):

Here you can see how the student applied the same strategy in his independent response during our literacy program:

After several sessions of practice, I gave this group of kids the chance to show off what they know to their classmates by running strategy groups!  I wrote the names of each "expert" on the SMARTboard and the rest of the students write their names under the expert they wanted to work with!

The experts used their notebooks as the model and taught each one of their "apprentices" how to cite text in their responses. They did an amazing job!

This was Halloween.  Just in case you were wondering about the fashion sense in the classroom.

By working with their peers, my students had the opportunity to see a model up close and ask questions in a completely risk free atmosphere.  And my experts (who usually need the most help) got to show off all they know!

Tell me: do you creating opportunities for student led experiences in your room?  What do you do?  (Feel free to link to any blog posts you have!)