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.