Literature + Global Connections + Technology– I Love It When It All Comes Together!

I love it when it all comes together!

I have some wonderful connections to share that integrate my 3 biggest passions in education: literacy, diversity, and technology! I’ve recently found 3 great learning opportunities through my PLC (Professional Learning Community), and I saw a way that they all fit together. I hope you’ll join me in participating in them! Click on each of the pictures below to check out these great opportunities to learn and share.

Courtney, from Ramona Recommends, is doing a traveling picture book linky for the summer. In this linky, you can share a picture book about where you live or a place that you have visited. The book you blog about should teach us about that place. What a great idea! (I’m not the only one who collects picture books from my travels!)

My book recommendation for this linky is a book about where I live. Pigs Over Denver was written by Kerry Lee MacLean in conjunction with school children from the greater Denver area. It names the most popular places to frequent in the Denver Metro area, as told by students! There are more books in this series such as Pigs Over Colorado, and Pigs Over Boulder, but Pigs Over Denver is my personal favorite!

Pernille, creator of the Global Read Aloud, has encouraged a global book exchange this year as part of the Global Read Aloud project. If you haven’t heard of the Global Read Aloud, you have to check it out! It’s a wonderful concept–all over the world, teachers read the same book to their students and then connect with another classroom anywhere in the world to discuss the book. Classrooms can write to each other on blogs, through emails, or even do a google hangout with their global epals. Discussing a common book from different global perspectives will give children a whole new outlook on the similarities and differences they share with people from other places. This year, you are encouraged to share a book with your global buddy about where you live to help them learn more about where you are from.

Thinglink is hosting a summer PD set of challenges so that you can get some hands on experience with Thinglink and generate ideas about how you can use it in the classroom. The fourth challenge is to create an interactive map.

Click here to see my interactive map for challenge #4

Here is how I put them altogether . . . Choosing picture books that give information about a place you have visited, as done in Ramona’s Recommendations, is the same idea behind the book exchange with the Global Read Aloud, so I decided to make my interactive map for Thinglink’s 4th challenge a collection of these picture books from around the world. This could be a great resource for learning about other cities, states, and countries through picture books from people who have been there!

This interactive map is open for anyone to edit. I have already added the titles and authors of the books from those who have linked up so far, as well as the link to each blog post, but please continue to add to this map! Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could collaborate and share a resource that acquainted us with the whole world through picture books?

To further redefine a collaborative resource once unimaginable on a global scale such as this, I would love to have students create a book trailer for the book that introduces their city, state, or country and add it to the same Thinglink interactive map. What a great introduction for their global epals, and what a great, authentic learning experience for students to conduct research and determine the most important things to share about where they live. Better yet, students could create their own ABC book about where they live, just like Pigs Over Denver, using their own pictures or illustrations from the places they’ve been in their community and writing about it from personal experience. iMovie or Videolicious would be great tools to use. If small groups of students each created a video about one important place in their community, all the videos could be combined into one ebook using the app Book Creator and then published on iBooks, or Nook!

A project like this could redefine age-old assignments such as “What I Did Over Summer Break” and “Create a Brochure About Your State.” By giving these time-honored traditional assignments a makeover using technology and an authentic global audience, you now have a 21st century learning experience that can help students internalize the value of where they live and share it with the world.

April’s 21st Century Tool of the Month: Narrable

Click on the picture or click here for an introduction to Narrable!

Narrable is a fantastic tool to use for storytelling from kindergarten – 12th grade. It’s a great way to allow students to publish their work, and it gives them the option of having a bigger audience to share their stories with. When you create a Narrable, you have the option of keeping your story private, sharing it through email, embedding a link on a website, or even sharing it through social media. Because it creates a url (the www. address), you can turn it into a QR code as well. Then others can use a device to scan the QR code and listen to the Narrable. What a great way to set up a student-created listening center!

I think Narrable is the perfect tool for primary grade students. The simplicity of using it makes it manageable for younger students to do independently, and it gives them the opportunity to put a voice to their writing. If you’ve ever seen a kindergartener or first grader’s writing, you know how important it can be to have a “translation” sometimes! I’ve also seen it as a big success in intermediate grades. The 4th grade teachers at my school were doing a unit on space, and as a formative assessment, they wanted the students to do some research on the solar system and then share what they learned. Because it was a formative assessment, they didn’t want their students to spend a lot of time creating a big presentation, so Narrable was perfect! It allowed the students to create a really nice presentation in just 2 computer lab periods. The first session was just to become familiar with Narrable and find pictures that they wanted to use. The second computer lab session was to record their Narrable. It’s quick and easy but gives students a polished presentation!

I’ll share some ideas about how you can use Narrable here and give you the opportunity to share some of your own ideas too. The creators of Narrable contacted me when they saw a lot of teachers were using it at our school, and they sent me some student examples so that I could share them with you!

1. Click here to see several examples and lesson plans that the creators of Narrable have  shared.

2. Narrate a story: Students can create their own audio book. You can have students practice their reading fluency or read informative books that teach about a topic that you are focusing on. Click here for an example.  Add those student-read stories to your listening library, and you’ve got a great FREE way to beef up your audio book collection! Just use the url or email link that Narrable creates and turn it into a QR code. I like to use QRstuff.com to create QR codes. It’s quick and easy to use.

3. Flip your instruction: Outline important steps that your students might need to listen to more than once. Click here to see the Narrable, “Cite an Online Newspaper or Magazine Article.

3. Write a How-to Story: Have students take a picture of each step of their instructions and then read them for each picture. It makes how-to stories much more powerful with step by step pictures to go along with the words! Click here to see how these first graders recorded directions (although their pictures were not step by step pictures).

4. Persuasive writing: First grade students did some authentic persuasive writing to convince their teacher and principal that they should get a classroom pet! Click here to see the first slide in their Narrable. (The other slides have pictures of their faces, so I’ll just stick to this one to give you an idea!) Note: I saved pictures to a folder in dropbox ahead of time so that the 1st graders could choose from the 3 or 4 choices I gathered. I recommend doing this with K and 1st graders to save a step, and dropbox is an easy, FREE way to share the same pictures on multiple computers at once. I have a school dropbox account set up that I connect all the school computers to so that we can easily share files all year long.

5. Publish a Report: When students write a non-fiction report, have them publish it with Narrable. It makes a great presentation tool, and for the students who struggle with writing, this is a positive way for them to present their ideas clearly to their audience without spelling or handwriting getting in the way. That also makes it easier to assess a child’s content knowledge separate from their writing ability.

6. Field Trip: When you go on a field trip, have each group of students bring a camera, ipad, ipod, iphone–whatever they have access to–and let them be responsible for taking a certain number of pictures during the field trip. You can have each student be responsible for recording something specific that they learned on the field trip. Narrable does have a free app, so if students can use an iphone to take pictures, on the bus ride home, you can have students record their Narrables. It will keep them busy and you’ll have a summary of what they learned by the time you get back to school! Because of budget restraints, you may not have access to ipads or iphones that you can take on a field trip, so let them bring their own! So many students have their own devices, and in elementary school, there is always parent chaperones who are in charge of small groups that can help be responsible for the technology kids bring along. You could also ask the parent chaperone to use their phone. Just give them a heads up when they sign up to be a chaperone that you will need them to bring a phone to take pictures and to download the free app Narrable so students can record as they go or on the way home. Then they can email you the finished Narrable! Note: If you ask parent chaperones to bring a phone with them on the field trip, you should use Remind101 to stay in touch with each group during the field trip. It is a safe, FREE texting service that lets you text parents or students without the need for exchanging cell phone numbers.

7. Digital Class Photo Album: Do you spend hours putting together a slide show that you burn on a CD or DVD to give to the kids at the end of the year? It’s a wonderful, thoughtful gesture, but it just got MUCH easier! Set up a narrable that is your class photo album for the year, and whenever special events or things to remember happen in your classroom, have the students take a picture and add a recording to it right when it happens! You can continue to add to this photo album all year long, but you can have the kids do the work! That will give them ownership, take the work off of your plate, and by having students record their thoughts right after the event happened, you’ll have that excitement captured forever! You can easily email the link to everyone in your class so that they all have the Digital Class Photo Album as a keepsake of your year together!

8. Get-to-know-you Class Building Activity: At the beginning of the year, you could have the students take a picture of themselves and record something special on a class Narrable. This would give you and your class a lasting introduction to each other that they can listen to again and again. Also, if you have new students join your class during the school year, you can give him/her the link to the class Narrable so that he/she can get to know classmates before meeting them. The new student can also add his/her picture and something special about himself/herself so that the class can have an introduction to the new student without the need for the new student to stand up in front of the class to share it (which can be embarrassing for some students!).

9. Center Instructions: Do you use Daily 5, Literacy Work Stations, or Math Work Stations in your classroom? If you do any kind of Reader’s Workshop or Math Workshop, you have probably had a problem with students remembering the instructions at each center, or you’ve spent several days setting up each center and helping students learn the procedures. Narrable can save you a lot of that instructional time. Record your instructions using a picture of your students correctly using the center, and turn it into a QR code and place it somewhere near the work station. Even your youngest students will not need to bother you during reading group instruction to ask you what they are supposed to do–all they have to do is scan the instructions and listen!

10. Let’s collaborate! Click here to add your ideas and examples to this padlet. We can all have a growing bank of resources if we share our ideas here.

Book Awards

I am passionate about books, and I want my students to be passionate about them too. I don’t just want my 2nd graders talking about books, I want them to discuss, review, analyze, interpret, and recommend books. That may seem like a high expectation, especially for 2nd graders, but I tried something this year that hit the mark!

I’m a blog surfer, and through scholastic.com, I found the idea for classroom book awards on Beth Newingham’s 3rd grade classroom website. I was so inspired I had to try it! Here’s how I implemented it in my classroom . . .

Part One: A Study of Good Writing

Throughout the year, our class studied different elements of good writing through mentor text. We learned about good beginnings, good endings, and we studied different genres of writing such as fables and fairy tales (see Fairy Tales and Fables post). Using an adaption of  ‘Finding Structures and Patterns in Text’ from Kaite Wood Ray and Lori Oczkus, we discussed, reviewed, analyzed, interpreted, and recommended good books, and we recorded our findings. (Click here for the form we used: Finding Patterns and structures in text.) Using this form as a tool to refer back to, we were able to really look for these patterns and structures in other text, including the students’ writing!

Good Beginnings

We learned that it is important for a writer to have a good beginning in order to grab the reader’s attention so they will want to keep reading. We read mentor text to find out what kind of beginnings good authors use. We named the different kind of structures that we found so we could use them in our writing too. By making up our own name for these structures and patterns, my class felt a sense of ownership and was able to refer to them easily in our discussions. Here are the names and mentor texts I used to introduce good beginnings:

Juicy Details

(click on the title above for a printable version of the form filled out)

Dialogue or Talking

(click on the title above for a printable version of the form filled out)

Action

(click on the title above for a printable version of the form filled out)

Surprise

(click on the title above for a printable version of the form filled out)

Standing on the Shoulders of Another Author

(click on the title above for a printable version of the form filled out)

Funny Beginning

(click on the title above for a printable version of the form filled out)

Good Endings

We also used mentor text to see how good authors wrap up their story. Here are the structures we found and the mentor text I used to introduce them:

Juicy Ending

(click on the title above for a printable version of the form filled out)

Clear Ending

(click on the title above for a printable version of the form filled out)

Save the Best for Last

(click on the title above for a printable version of the form filled out)

To get your class started with this study of good writing, you can use the examples above. If you have a smartboard, you can use the smartboard lesson I created by clicking here: Book Awards. Next year, I will begin by using the student examples on the form that my students wrote this year, but I will add good beginning and ending examples from my new class once they begin using those structures in their writing. Feel free to do the same!

Part Two: Becoming familiar with Book Awards

Once my 2nd graders became “experts” on these elements of writing, I introduced them to the idea of book awards. They learned about Caldecott and Newberry book awards, and many others (the information I shared with my class is included in the smartboard lesson). We spent time going through my classroom library and the school library finding as many books as we could that had received an award. They were so excited every time they found a book that had been given an award, and they couldn’t read it fast enough!

I announced that our study of good writing made us experts on what good writing looks like, so we were going to have our own book award ceremony called the Stout (my last name) Shout Out Awards. They were going to have a chance to give a “shout out” to the books they thought were the best in each category. I put nomination forms up in the library and the nominations began! (Click here for the Book Nomination Form)

If a student nominated a book, he/she had to give a persuasive speech on flip video (see the movie above), and they filled out a graphic organizer to help them organize what they were going to say (Persuasive graphic organizer). Then we watched their persuasive videos before we voted (click here for the  Stout Shout Out Ballot).

Part Three: The Shout Out Awards Ceremony

We pulled out all the stops for our awards ceremony! With the red carpet rolled out before them and the stanchion holding back the paparazzi, students who nominated a book got to walk that book down the red carpet. We had a podium in the front, and the students announced the nominations in each category (click here for the nomination speeches).

The winner was kept in a sealed envelope that the announcer ripped open to reveal the winner! The winning book received a gold Shout Out Award sticker. Next year, the new 2nd graders will be able to see the books that won at the 2011 Shout Out Awards.

Reflections . . .

I had a few pleasant surprises when I launched the book awards. There were 3 students in my class this year that had significant disabilities. When they learned that there is an award given to books that portray what life is like for someone with a disability, it made a huge impact on those children. They decided to write their own book about what everyday life is like for them, and how it is different from other kids because of the disability they have. It had honestly never occurred to me that this would be such a powerful learning experience on diversity, but I was wonderfully surprised by the tolerance and understanding this created in my classroom. I did not initiate this touching effect, but I hope I will be able to recreate it in the future.

Another surprise I got when implementing this unit was how adamant the students were about having the stories that they wrote themselves be part of the book awards ceremony. I didn’t know if it was a good idea to let them vote on their own writing, but it was very important to them, so I did it and got some wonderful results! First, I decided it wouldn’t be fair to let them vote on their own story, so we asked the 3rd grade class to nominate a few books in each category. Since the 3rd graders had studied the same structures and patterns last year, they knew what to look for in the 2nd graders’ writing.  Once the 3rd graders narrowed it down, the 1st graders got to make the final decision on the gold medal winners. Since they would be studying these structures and patterns next year, the first grade teacher read the stories aloud, and they got to hear mentor text from the 2nd graders!

I was pleasantly surprised by how this little experiment turned out. First, the quality of their writing increased exponentially! The idea of writing for an audience really took shape for them when they knew students in other grade levels would be reading and voting on their stories. Second, the third grade teacher said that her class was so excited to be part of the nominations, and they spent days pouring over each story looking for specific patterns and structures. They wrote lovely comments on the back of each students’ story, so whether or not they were nominated, each student had a lot of positive feedback about what they had written. The first grade teacher also said that this was such an exciting experience for her class that she would definitely do it again. They asked for the stories to be read to them again and again! And last, the students took the news well when the winners were announced.  Although it was a little disappointing for some at first, they supported the students who won and cheered them on. I am a huge believer in building a strong classroom community, but I think a little positive competition can be motivating. With a generation of kids where everyone gets a trophy and everything is given out equally regardless of participation and/or effort, I am finding that my students tend to do a mediocre job and think it’s good enough.  I would never support a cut-throat competition in my classroom, so we kept our focus on writing our personal best story using the structures and patterns we had been learning. It was a great opportunity to discuss sportsmanship, and I was proud of them for the support they gave each other and for the wonderful stories they wrote! I will definitely do it again next year!

Standards

This unit of study specifically addresses the following standards according to the state of Colorado:

Exploring the writing process helps to plan and draft a variety of literary genres

Write opinion pieces in which they introduce the topic or book they are writing about, state an opinion, supply reasons that support the opinion, use linking words (e.g., because, and, also) to connect opinion and reasons, and provide a concluding statement or section. (CCSS: W.2.1)

Creative approaches to writing and story craft distinguish best-selling authors from ordinary writers.

Discussions contribute and expand on the ideas of self and others

Create audio recordings of stories or poems; add drawings or other visual displays to stories or recounts of experiences when appropriate to clarify ideas, thoughts, and feelings. (CCSS: SL.2.5)

Featured Book Friday: Owl Moon

Owl Moon by Jane Yolen

K-4

If you’ve ever looked forward to a special day with your father, this story will bring back the thrill that only a young child knows. Written in the voice of a girl who is going “owling” with her father late one night, the beautiful pictures and language in this story put you into the forest as you hear your “feet crunch over the crisp snow” with “heat in your mouth from all the words that are not spoken”. You’ll see the “black shadows stain the white snow”, and “feel someone’s icy palm run down (your) back” as you listen for the whoo-whoo-who-who-who-whoooo under an owl moon.

~Teacher Stuff blog review written by Emily Stout

FREEBIE: You can download some lesson resources for this book by clicking here:

• “Visualizing with 5 Senses” cards (Owl Moon)
• Printable directions for “Round Table Consensus” with Owl Moon (color)
• Printable directions for “Jot Thoughts Poem” with Owl Moon (color)

Curriculum Connections

by Emily Stout

• Comprehension strategy: Visualizing
• Author as Mentor: write using 5 senses

1. Read the story Owl Moon to your class. I recorded myself reading this book ahead of time, and I used sound effects to help the students visualize the story better. For example, the story says, “A farm dog answered the train, and then a second dog joined in.” (Click the sentence and download “Owl Moon snippet” to hear a part of the recording.) I used sound effects to give the story the same eerie feeling of a forest late at night. Soundbible.com has a great collection of free sound effects. (I would share my recording with you, but I believe that would break copyright laws.) If you have older students, you can let them make a recording of the book using sound effects. (I recommend Garage Band–it is the easiest way for you or your students to record books.)

2. This story is full of beautiful language that paints a picture in your mind. Use ‘Round Table Consensus‘ (See Kagan Structures below) to sort the words and phrases from this story into 5 senses. The “Visualizing with 5 Senses” cards (print from link above) has sentences and phrases from the story your students can use.

3. Once your students have spent time sorting the language used in Owl Moon, they can use the author, Jane Yolen, as a mentor to write their own poem focusing on the strategy of visualizing. Have students write about a time that they went camping, swimming, or did something outside. Have each team agree on an outdoor event to write about, then use the structure “Jot Thoughts” (see Kagan Structures below) to help students brainstorm good visualizing words and phrases to put in their poem. First have students use their sticky notes from “Jot Thoughts” to create a team poem, then have students write their own individual poem.

• Kagan Structures

– Round Table Consensus:

1. Each team needs a “Visulizing with 5 Senses” sorting mat and Owl Moon cards.

2. The first person takes one card, reads it aloud, and decides where it goes on the sorting mat.

3. Teammates show a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to show if they agree or disagree. If there are any thumbs-down, the team needs to discuss the answer. If the team cannot agree, everyone raises a hand so the teacher can help.

4. When the team agrees on the answer, it is the next person’s turn to draw a card.

-Jot Thoughts Poem:

1. Each team needs sticky notes for each person.

2. As a team, decide which topic you are going to focus on i.e. camping, swimming, etc.

3. When the teacher starts the timer, write as many visualizing sentences or phrases as your can about your topic. Write one phrase or sentence for each sticky note. Try to cover the table with your ideas. Use all 5 senses.

4. When your time is up, use the ‘Round Robin’ structure to read all the ideas your team came up with.

5. Arrange your sentences in an order that sounds pleasing.

Example: Camping

Crickets chirping

stars sparkling in the sky.

The hot dry smoke

burns my eyes when I

squeeze them shut.

Marshmallows puff out

their cheeks

as the orange fire dances under them

turning their fat white

cheeks brown.

The spongy center doesn’t

always slide off the stick

when I pull the soft, gooey filling

into my mouth. Yum!

Don’t forget to send me your curriculum connections! Click here to share your favorite book.

Featured Book Friday: Not A Box

Not A Box by Antoinette Portis

preK-2

This delightfully simple book was awarded the Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Award, New York Times Best Illustrated Book of 2007, An ALA Notable Children’s Book, New York Times Bestseller, Publisher Weekly Bestseller, and Nick Jr. Family Magazine “Most Imaginative” picture book 2006. Perfect for beginning readers, this book highlights the creativity of children as an ordinary box is transformed into a race car, a burning building, a pirate ship and much more!

~Teacher Stuff blog review written by Emily Stout

Bonus!! If you send a submission for a featured book by June 24, 2011, I will send you the materials I created for this lesson! That includes cooperative learning roles name plates with what each job does and says, Roam the Room form, Carousel Feedback form, and more! Click here to submit a Featured Book.

Curriculum Connections

by Emily Stout

• Social Skills/Rules: Use this book to teach children the life skill of creativity. This book is the perfect example of ‘thinking outside the box’–literally!
• Writing/Kagan Cooperative Project: Use this book to introduce the cooperative learning project “Not A Box” that will become a creative writing prompt.

1. Collect boxes of all different shapes and sizes from refrigerator boxes to ring boxes.

2. With students in cooperative learning groups, they will use the structure ‘Spend-A-Buck‘ to choose a box that they would like to transform into something creative. Use the structure ‘Jot Thoughts‘ so students can generate ideas about how to transform their box. (See ‘Kagan Structures’ below for directions on these cooperative learning structures.)

3. Using the structure ‘Team Project,’ assign cooperative learning roles (see Kagan structures below) to each student in the group. First, the students will plan how they will transform their box. The recorder will sketch the group’s vision for their final product. The materials monitor will make a list of the materials that they need, collect all the supplies on the list and distribute them to the team. Each team member is responsible for creating part of the box design. The designer will decide how each team members’ design will be incorporated into the box design, and the attacher will decide how to attach each design to the box creation.

4. Use the ‘Roam the Room‘ structure (see Kagan Structures below) so each team has an opportunity to see other projects and discuss ideas for additions and improvements to their own projects. When the team is finished with their project, the materials monitor returns all supplies and leads the team clean-up.

5. Use the ‘Carousel Feedback‘ structure (see Kagan Structures below) for teams to share their “Not A Box” projects.

6. Have students write their own “Not A Box” story independently, or use the ‘Continuous Round Table’ structure to have teams write a creative cooperative story about their projects. Teams could “stand on the shoulders” of Antoinette Portis and write a story following the pattern of Not A Box (recommended for beginning writers), or each team could create their own unique story that somehow includes their team box.

• Kagan Structures

– Spend-A-Buck: “To make a team decision, teammates use funny money and “spend a buck” to vote on their top picks. The option with the most bucks is deemed the team decision (p.6.35, Kagan 2009).” Each team member is given 10 fake dollars. The team chooses 4 different sized boxes to vote on for this project and writes or draws them on separate pieces of scratch paper. Each team member puts $1 on each choice to validate all the choices. Then they put their remaining money on their favorite choice(s). For example, one student may put all his/her remaining money on one choice, and another student may split his/her money between 2 or more of the choices. The recorder counts the money, and the choice with the most money is the winner.

– Jot Thoughts: “Teammates ‘cover the table,’ writing ideas on slips of paper (p.6.28, Kagan 2009).” Give the students 30 seconds to think about how they might transform their box into something creative. With sticky notes or scratch pieces of paper, the students write down as many ideas as they can (one idea per piece of paper) in 1 minute. As soon as they finish writing an idea, students place their paper (without overlapping) in the middle of the table and try to cover the table with their ideas. When the timer goes off, the team reads all the ideas on the table and decides which one to use for their “Not A Box” project.

– Team Project:

1. Project goal: Teams must transform a box into something creative.

2. The students are assigned the following cooperative learning roles:

–recorder: The recorder sketches the team’s vision for how their box will look when they are finished, and he/she writes a list of materials the team will need.

–materials monitor: The materials monitor is responsible for collecting, distributing, and putting away all materials that the team needs. He/she is also responsible for making sure the team cleans up when they are finished.

–designer: The designer decides how each part of the box design created by individual members will fit together in the team “Not A Box” project.

–attacher: The attacher decides how to attach the design together once the designer decides how it will look. The attacher will need to determine if he/she needs to use glue, a glue stick, tape, staples, etc. to attach all pieces of the design.

3. Students work in teams to create their “Not A Box” projects.

“Step 2 is what distinguishes Team Projects from group work. The teacher does not just say, ‘Work on this project in your team.’ This would violate the principles of good cooperative learning. There is nothing in unstructured group work that guarantees individual accountability or equal participation. Students could work together in harmony without any structure, each contributing their own fair share. But then again, one student could do most of the work . . . (p.13.5, Kagan 2009).”

– Roam the Room: “Once students have made visible progress on their project, the teacher says, ‘Everyone, please stop working and stand up. Roam the room.’ Teammates may go from project to project together, they may break into pairs, or everyone can go their own way. When they return, they discuss what they learned and what they want to integrate into their project (p.13.9, Kagan 2009).”

– Carousel Feedback: “Teams rotate from project to project to leave feedback for other teams (p.6.25, Kagan 2009).” When every team has finished their “Not A Box” project, they set it up on their table with a feedback form. The teacher sets the timer as teams rotate to each project, discuss it, and write comments on that teams’ feedback form. When teams have rotated through all the projects, they go back to their table and read the comments that were left on their feedback form.

– Continuous Round Table: “Students take turns generating written responses . . . to a project. (p.6.34, Kagan 2009).” One teammate begins with the paper and pencil. When the teacher starts the timer, the first student writes the first sentence in the story, then passes the paper clockwise to the next student. That student writes the next sentence in the story then passes it on. This continues until the timer goes off.

Variation: If you have young students who struggle with writing, you could use the ‘Continuous Round Robin’ structure which works the same way as ‘Continuous Round Table,’ but students share their sentence orally instead of writing it.

Bibliography

Kagan, Spencer, Dr., Kagan, Miguel, 2009. Kagan cooperative learning. Kagan Publishing; San Clemente, CA.