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Teaching Strategies and Activities

Pages of activities for multiple subject areas

By Maria ShawPublished 2 years ago 6 min read
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Reading

Cloze Reading

Remove words from the text

Have students put in the missing words either with a list or with their own background knowledge

Think Aloud

Partner reads to their partner

Reader stops often and says the things they are thinking like predictions, I wonder why, this makes me think of, etc.

Partner records what the reader said

Switch readers and writers

Discuss either in partners or as a class what type of things came out in the think aloud

Teacher must model this several times for this to work

Consensus Note Taking

All pencils down

After reading section discuss what the most important thing is that needs to be written down

Have an agreed statement or segment of information

Pencils up and write the agreed upon response

Annotated Notes

Underline main ideas and supporting details

Exclamation point next to an area that was surprising

Question mark next where the reader had a question (write out the question in the margin)

Circle and define in the margins unknown vocabulary

Write an arrow over an area that connects to you and write how it connects or what the reader thought

Pre and Post reading guide

Make up or copy from the text book 5 or more statements (I usually use 10-15). Make some of the statements false in some way

Have students read through the statements and mark which statements they think are true and false

Have students read and find which statements were actually true and which were false

Close Reading

Star the concepts you can explain correctly

Check the concepts you sort of know but can’t explain

? the concepts you still have questions about

RCRC

Read the paragraph, think about the topic and important details

Cover the paragraph with your hand]

Recite to yourself what you read by saying the topic and important details in your own word

Check by lifting your hand, if you forgot something then start again

Read around the text

Have students acknowledge the title, subheading, images, and graphs/charts in a text

Have students read the first and last part of the text to preview what the reading will be about

You can take this further by having student predict what they will learn about

Shrink it

Students read a small section (paragraph)

Pull out the who or what the paragraph is about

Pull out the most important thing or things about the who or what

Make a sentence that is 10 words or less using the pulled out situation

Read the sentence to your partner, if you it is more than 10 words the partner has to tell them to shrink it

Most important word

Have student read and list the 5 most important words

Then have student cross off a word so they have the 4 most important

Continue until you have the one most important word

Writing

Carousel Paragraph

Count off 1-6 or whatever you choose

Each team gets a different colored marker

Have 6 sentence starters for what you want in the paragraph (Example Urban sprawl means ___________ )

Have groups write the sentence starter and what they agree on to complete the sentence.

Have groups rotate to the next station, read what the previous group wrote, and then show the next sentence starter (example: A city spreads from the inner core by __________________________)

Continue on until students have written out a paragraph using the sentence starters then have each group read which ever paragraph they end up with at the end

Sentence Stems

Give students sentences or writing frames

Geography is the ________ of Earth’s _____________.

Perspective paragraph

From my perspective ___________________ is the most important component of (whatever topic your covering) because ______

Share with partner and write down how perspectives are similar or different

Somebody wanted but so

Student identify someone or something in the reading

Explain what they wanted

Describe the problem or hurdle

Explain what they did in spite of or because of the problem.

10% Summary

Students start with an SAT statement (source, author, title)

Student include 3-4 facts

Word count should be 10% of the words in the text being summarized

Cause and Effect

The cause explains why something happens

The effect is the description of what happened

Venn Diagram

Students compare (write similarities)

Students Contrast (write differences)

Vocabulary

Partner or Classroom Pyramid

Can do in partners or with a class

For whole class have a person come up and sit with their back facing the board. For partners have one person with their back to the wall

Project the word

Have the partner or the class give out clues without using the word until the person guesses the correct word

Picture

Have student create an image or symbol that relates to the word (they could also look through the chapter and find an image that they think best illustrates the word)

Definition

Write the page number and book definition

Write the definition in your own words

Explain this word to a second grader

Examples

Give an example of the vocabulary word

Reminder Words

List 3-5 words this word reminds you of (example: Geography – land, mountain, GPS)

Sentences

Write a sentence using the word

Find a sentence in the book that uses this word

Seen it

List where you’ve seen this word (example – Geography is the title of our book or I found the word geography on page 11)

Synonym

Give a word that means close to the same thing

Homonyms

List words that have similar spelling parts

Antonyms

List words that mean the opposite

Syllables

Have student break the word into syllables

Silly story

Give students a list of vocabulary words

Give students a starter for their story including a setting and perhaps characters.

Have the first student use a vocabulary word in their school appropriate sentence about the topic

Pass to the next student in the group. You could give another starter sentence if needed

Keep passing the paper until all the words have been used and the story is complete

Have student share their stories

Word Pairs

Provide a list of word pairs from your identified vocabulary. Allow students to identify the relationship, if any, of the words that you have grouped together

Completion activity

Provide students with vocabulary definitions as well as sentence starter. Require students to complete the sentence starter in a complete sentence.

Yes/No/Why

Provide questions that include weekly vocabulary terms that require reinforcement and allow stude3nts to work independently or in groups to answer the questions in short constructed responses.

Do territories that are possessions have autonomy? Example

Type 1

Timed writing

Number of lines required given to students

There isn’t a correct answer

Type 2

Correct answer (no line requirement)

Type 3

FCA’s given for writing

3 FCA’s given

Type 4

Peer edited type 3

Type 5

Self, Peer, and Teacher edited

Final draft is publishable

Review

Summary review

Give students 3 student summaries (perhaps 10% summaries)

Have students evaluate the summaries by Who needs to re-read and why. Who could teach this concept and why. What new information can you take away from these summaries to add to your summary

Concept sorting

Have ideas/statements/or terms on cards

Have three or more categories labeled and have partners sort ideas into the categories

Have groups share out or trade out a couple of members to another table to share how they sorted and categorized

Find someone who

Use a concept from previous learning

Have a grid with the review concepts for students to fill in with the partner they find (example: Find someone who can explain the difference between rural and urban)

Students find a different partner for each square. Have the partner sign and then the student can fill in what their partner explained about the concept

Have students find different partners for each concepts

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About the Creator

Maria Shaw

I have had a roller coaster of a life and would love to share some of my real life and my imagination with others through stories.

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