Teaching Strategies and Activities
Pages of activities for multiple subject areas
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
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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