Reading Portfolio

Summary:

Students receive cards with different excerpts from the story written on them. Through a wandering classroom discussion, they attempt to connect the different (purposely vague) cards to establish meaning. Students have their prior knowledge and experiences engaged as they attempt to collaboratively construct a story from the skeleton given. Students make predictions and have discussions based on the direction they anticipate the story to go. This is useful as a prereading strategy because the students will construct stories from the different pieces and be ready to compare their story with the actual narrative.

Pro/Con:

Pro: Students engage in lively discussion that will develop naturally and without much guidance.

Con: Students may establish notions about the story that carry over into the actual reading and create confusion.

Pro: Students develop predictive abilities and develop their sense of logical cohesion in a narrative

Pro: Students will appreciate the active nature of the activity and will likely remain engaged.

Summary: Students begin this activity by, as a group, collecting things they already know about the subject material of the impending reading. This engages the students’ prior knowledge and encourages them to anticipate some of the reading they are about to do. After this, they reflect on what gaps might exist in their knowledge and identify pieces of information they would like to learn from the text. After reading, students collect their knowledge and compare it to the pre-reading columns to help them realize their growth.

Pro/Con:

Con: KWL assumes that students have some prior knowledge about subject material

Pro: KWL engages the whole class in discussion

Pro: KWL scaffolds those who have less knowledge about the subject by getting them on the same level as their peers

Pro: KWL encourages students to look forward when they read the text to evaluate the knowledge they already possess

Con: Students can be reluctant to fill out the “want to know” column of the chart

Summary:

A text or section of text is read by the teacher and students simultaneously. The teacher closes their text and the students ask any questions they have about the text to either the other students or the teacher. After this carries on for a few minutes, the students close their books and attempt to answer questions from the teacher. This helps students to build a more robust, logical understanding of the text and also nudges them toward using their text to answer questions (by demonstrating the difficulty of doing so without the text). The ultimate goal is for students to build their logical proficiency and to be able to make textual predictions and conclusions on their own.

Pro/Con:

Pro: Students are put on the same level as the teacher ( having no text when answering questions)

Pro: Students are given free reign to ask as many questions as they want in an organized fashion

Pro: Students develop a more thorough understanding of a section of text through both asking and answering questions

Con: Students might ask few questions or questions that have a direct answer

Con: Students may struggle to understand the purpose of having the book open/closed if they aren’t used to citing the text in discussion.

Notes:

Right now, I’m thinking that this might be a weekly activity. At the end of the week, I could use this strategy to emphasize prediction with my questions and clarify unanswered questions during the first phase. That way students understand what is behind them and are actively thinking about what’s next at the end of the week.

Retelling

Summary:

Students collect any questions they had about the text into a chart organized into the three columns in the title plus one for their question. They begin with a question they have about the text, they collect what the text tells them about their question, they talk about what they know about the question, and then they synthesize these two into a conclusion. Essentially, this strategy helps students to organize their thoughts and more meaningfully engage their prior knowledge in a structured way.

Pro/Con:

Pro: Helps students organize their thoughts

Pro: Actively engages prior knowledge

Pro: Could be easily made into a classwide activity for discussion

Con: Does very little scaffolding

Con: Depends on students having questions about the text in the first place

Summary:

This one is really simple. After everyone has read the text, have the students recount the events of the story in as much or as little detail as they feel comfortable with. For my own use, I would adopt this same strategy, but add a more collaborative twist to the activity. Students would recount fragments of the story in chronological order through a random calling system of some sort. Having many minds come together to recount the story ensures that students come together with a standardized surface reading of the text (If a student fell asleep, lost their place, and skipped a line, their peers could help them get on the same page). This would be a baseline and very fast activity (maybe 7-10 minutes) just so people aren’t lost.

Pro/Con:

Pro: Gets all students to the same place in terms of plot

Pro: Emphasizes the chronological progression of a narrative in a succinct way

Pro: Could eventually become an entirely autonomous, collaborative exercise for the class

Pro: Gets all of the class involved

Con: Might put students who didn’t read in a difficult situation

Con: Could be tedious for advanced readers

Con: Doesn’t delve deeply into the content

Turn and Talk

I particularly enjoy this method because of the structure it offers to students who might be more reluctant to discuss things in a more informal setting. It gives students an opportunity to prepare for the topics and prevents any unnecessary anxiety for more reserved students.

This method is both simple and proven. When talking to peers about any discussion questions becomes the norm for bell ringer activities or in activities more entrenched in the material, it becomes very natural and takes on a streamlined quality compared to other strategies. There is, like with any strategy, a certain amount of scaffolding and time required in order to get all students aboard, but it can be a rewarding and low-prep way to get discussions started.