Jigsaw Reading - The Circulatory System

I had each group of students read an article of the circulatory system. I explained to them that they would be "teaching" the rest of the class the information they are reading. I gave each team a graphic to complete to make sharing the article more organized. The students were engaged while they were reading the articles and were eager to share. The students did a great job of presenting their individual information and then put the ideas and information together very well. This lesson was a success!

Posting

I am now posting

My connection lesson

Please review my comments on Sept. 23rd for Rachel's post.

Visualizing and Making Comparisons

In our class, we work on problem solving strategies, daily. While working on problem solving dealing with time, size, or equations I usually ask the students to visualize. I tell the students to close their eyes and picture in their minds, what ever it is we are talking about. If we are dealing with a problem that has to do with size, I ask the students to visualize by using their minds and fingers to decide what unit they might measure an object with. Visualizing and making comparisons has helped students grasp the concept of real world problem solving.

Noticing and Exploring Thinking

This may have been the easiest lesson to implement (p81). I passed out big sticky notes, then read "Library Mouse: A Friend's Tale." After I was done reading (without stopping - no thinking aloud), I had the kids write on their post-its what the story made them think about. They shared what they wrote with their shoulder partner and then put their post-it on a chart titled "What this story makes me think about..." This lesson went perfect with our focus in reading on "text-self" "text-text" and "text-world" connections. All were really engaged, and they had a blast sharing what they were thinking about.

Monitoring Inner Conversation- Flop!

I attempted the lesson on what to do when meaning is lost - monitoring our inner conversation. I picked a technical book and tried to read it. We talked about what to do when you lose the meaning of a text. It ended up being a lesson on 'good fit' books. It was funny, but I don't think it accomplished the goal of the lesson. I am going to give it another try later this week.

Inner Conversation

We were working on the folktale "Wise Old Woman" in class, so I decided to check out a higher level folktale from the library. I chose "Two Pairs of Shoes" because it contains words that the students aren't familiar with and is a folktale from the Middle East so it contains content that would not be familiar to them. I gave each student 6 post it notes and read the book aloud. As I read, they were to write "!" or "?" on their post its and make a note explaining why. The "!" could be for something new that they learned, or an "I didn't know that" moment. The "?" was for questions that they had about story or words in the story.

They did a really good job and even compared it to other books that they had read.

A couple of days later, I passed out an article about Taylor Swift. The students wrote on the paper "!" or "?" and highlighted words or passages that they were confused about or excited to learn. They were completely engaged. They took notes in the margin beside their "!" and "?" to explain what they learned or what their question was.

Welcome to our blog!

Well team, here it is. Our official blog for discussing and sharing how we are implementing STW in our classrooms. Due to copyright laws, I am going to call it STW because I can't think of a better way to address it without siting everything we say. Let me know your thoughts on this so we can all be on the same page.
Our action step stated that we would implement one strategy every nine weeks. If we stick to this plan, we will only cover four of the six strategies. We may want to implement a little more than one every quarter so that we cover them all by May.
As you implement a strategy, please post how you used it in your classroom, if you used a specific book or article for the lesson, and how it worked out for you. I can't wait to read about each of our experiences with STW.