This month, we focus on the 4 C's: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. Today's entry comes from Dawn Whalen, English teacher at Torrey Pines High School:
Here’s a good collaborative and frontloading activity that accomplishes two things: First, it keeps kids on task instead of veering off on tangents, chit-chatting about their social lives; second, it helps kids understand concepts in more challenging articles before they read which helps raise the quality of their analysis.
The newest name for it is I KNOW / YOU KNOW although variations of this strategy have been floating around since the Literature Project in the 90’s and the Writing Project in the 80’s. It obviously withstands the test of time.
Here’s my variation based upon an article by Helen Keller about the importance of her teacher which is part of a larger set of articles presenting various purposes of education:
1) Decide what the main concepts you want the kids to understand. You can write these as questions, phrases, or single words. For my article I chose “What’s the best way to learn?” and “Describe the best teacher.”
2) Give kids between one to two minutes ONLY to write the first thing that comes to mind when you say that concept out loud. They need to keep writing the whole time you are timing them. I usually give one minute.
3) Have them partner up, read their response, and then listen to their partner’s response. Lots of variations are here--keep the same partner, switch partners each time, toggle back and for the between a few partners. They all work. Again, time them so they keep on track. About two minutes will do.
4) Last they have to write down what their partner said.
Just continue this sequence for as many concepts as you have. I hope this works well for you.
