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!)

Student-Moderator Discussion Prompts in Action!

In my excitement about finding a means to make my scripted literacy program a little more student-led, I hastily threw together yesterday's blog post.  I shared some prompts for a student-moderator to use when leading a whole class discussion.  But I didn't share how I planned to use them.  Oops!  So sorry....and here goes:

 Prior to today, I emphasized making eye contact with classmates, using text based evidence, using accountable talk stems, responding directly to claims made by classmates and not taking differing opinions as a personal attack (this is still an ongoing lesson!).  Our conversations have been meaty and really interesting!

Today, I handed over responsibility for leading this discussion to a student.  Before the whole class discussion, the rest of the class prepares in small groups.  The students answer an opinion based question and defend their idea with details from the text.  While the class prepared, my student-moderator read the prompts and we briefly discussed ways to keep the conversation moving.  When she was ready, she jumped in a took over the discussion.

Of course, I handed off this responsibility to my most capable student, but I anticipate other students being successful and over time being able to ditch the prompts and lead the conversation independently.

If you want to grab a set of prompts, click HERE to download them. You can edit the portion that says EDIT to remind your student how to grab the attention of their classmates.  You will need PowerPoint to edit the file.

Enjoy!