IDEAS Notebook Deanna Echols December 4, 2012

1. Writing Breaks Giving students a break from writing every 10-20 mins o Stop, reflect, stretch, talk to others Helps retention (can retain up to 70%) Good for text-based responses- can stop and take breaks to process what you are reading/writing

2. Scholastic Story Starters Great for giving kids a prompt-chosen at random by spinning wheels Different genres/grade levels (difficulty) to choose from Scholastic.com

3. Old Speech to new speech Students can read an archaic-structured speech and rewrite it into a modern speech Great for interpreting text and comprehension

4. Three column engagement Students use a sheet of paper folded twice (like a brochure) to make three columns. One column is agree, one is disagree, and one is questions Useful for engaging students in reading, building argumentative writing, debates, and watching movies

5. Facebook Page for famous people Useful for history / comprehension Create mock facebook pages for famous people in history Have to do background research to be able to fill in sections of the About me Also have to do research to make inferences about music, things that person would like, relationships with others, etc

6. Christmas Tree Chart Gimmick for organizing thoughts(broad to narrow or narrow to broad) Use for classification of items, building arguments 7. Create a movie preview for a book Students read a book and have to create a preview to share with their peers Has to be shortened and concise

Cannot give away the ending or resolution part of the story Great for comprehension

8. Conversation bubbles of characters Useful for comprehension Having characters on a piece of paper with conversation bubbles to be filled in by students after reading a text

9. Build up for the writing assessment Helps teach them to manage their time while taking the writing assessment Builds endurance for the 60 minute test Start with small time and as you increase time, give the students a new job that needs to be accomplished

10. Draw/Illustrate Spelling words Helps further comprehension and understanding of the words and how they are used Draw each spelling word Gives another form of the word for the visual learner

11. Book Walk Drawing conclusions/ predicting Silently take the students through each page in a book, not reading the words Ask students to tell you what happened in the story and then read it after

12. Sticky note summary Students can read sections of a text and then write a short summary of the section to fit on a sticky note Place on the page and use for discussion and comprehension assessments

13. Limiting space for responses Using a notecard or post it for students to respond Helps the lower kids not feel anxiety to write a lot and the higher kids be more concise

14. Defending your sticky

Writing an opinion from a reading on a sticky, placing on a page, and then defending it with text that is the same size as the sticky (linked to limiting responses #15)

15. Sticky Essay Using sticky note summaries of different sections Building up, using 5 or more post its to write the topic sentences of an essay

16. Symbolizing your reading Have students work in groups Use butcher paper or poster board Students must symbolize the main idea of the reading without using words Comprehension- visual connection to help with recall 17. Current Event Journals Students start a journal with the onset of an event currently happening Journal their opinions, emotions, etc Can monitor their changing ideas, see the progression of thought as more information was released 18. Evolving Rights Train Use a train cut out Gimmick that helps students process information read about rights as US citizens The caboose would be past rights, the passenger car current rights, and the engine would be rights students would like to have or think we will have in the future Knowledge of current issues, rights, process of rights

19. Survival Skills Students will have a covered wagon cutout with lift-able canvas Students will list 3 things that they would need to survive on a wagon train Have to have understanding of the subject matter 20. Keys to success Students fill out the steps in a repeating process on numbered key cut-outs, such as steps in the writing process The keys are placed on a ring so they can be continuously cycled