The Day before Vacation . . . a Self-reflection Gallery Walk

The last day before a holiday break is always a tough day for teachers—first, kids don’t want to be in school anyway, and those who are there expect class to be a party; second, often there are absences, so starting something new or completing some final assessment means there will be lots of make-ups once school resumes after the break.

Since self-reflections and self-assessments are an important component in the new lessonunit structures as well as an important “best practice” tool and key to learning, this might be a day for students (and teachers) to do some self-reflection.

Expecting kids to do self-reflection on their own requires some modeling. Giving a broad, open-ended topic (like “what did you like or not like”) is a bit unrealistic for the last day, but making the effort interactive, social, and collaborative, and giving some specific guidelines and topics upon which to reflect might make the activity both beneficial and worthwhile.

Here’s a suggestion:
1. Put kids into small groups (not too large—maybe 4?).
2. Come up with some categories upon which you’d like some reflection and/or feedback. Divide the different assignments, units, activities, aspects you want feedback on, etc. into categories, so each small group can have one or two to discuss as a group and come to some consensus.
3. Give each group a large piece of chart paper and a colored marker. If possible, give each group a different colored marker.
4. Ask each group to write their topic on the top of the paper (or you could already have the topics printed out in large type and they could paste the topic at the top), then the members of the group should brainstorm and write their suggestions, ideas, thoughts on the chart. They should consider what worked, what parts they had trouble with, where their understanding broke down, what they enjoyed the most, etc. Here’s where your modeling of sample responses before the groups begin will really reap benefits.
5. To run the gallery walk, post the reflections around the room. Have the groups move around the room, looking at the ideas, discussing them among their group, and adding their own thoughts to those already on the chart paper. To make orderly progress through the room, give the groups a designated amount of time they can discuss and write, then have all the groups move to the next chart at the same time. Five or six minutes might be enough—you’ll know.

6. Some ground rules:

• Each group has its own “color” marker, so you can see where each group adds to the charts as they discuss.
• Groups must stay on topic AND they must add at least one or two comments to each chart (a short amount of time helps with this).
• Disagreement is okay. Just explain yourself.

Written Conversations

This short activity plays on the love students have for writing and passing notes, text-messaging, and emailing friends. Taken from Content Area Writing, by Daniels, Zemelman, and Steineke (2007), written conversation takes this sort of informal, non-curricular writing and puts it in the classroom, capitalizing on kids’ use of one-to-one correspondence as a means to spark thoughts and discussion about the class’s reading and/or assignments.
Sometimes called dialogue journals, this writing-to-learn activity can be used in any content area, and is a more engaging, active replacement for class discussion, because everyone is thinking and writing.
How to get started:
1. Students are placed in pairs. They are given a question based on work the class has done, read, studied, etc.
2. Each student writes his ideas, responses, thoughts about the question to his partner. The teacher should give a short time limit to this writing (don’t make it too long, or students will finish writing and then talk). A major rule is "NO TALKING, just WRITING."
3. The partners exchange, read the other’s response, and then write back about what the other has said.
4. This can continue for two or three passes. Too many or too much time and students run out of things to say.

Deepening Interpretation Skills

Helping kids interpret figurative language is a “gatekeeper thinking skill,” according to Jeff Zwiers (Developing Academic Thinking Skills 6-12, 2004). What he means by this is that students must hone this skill in order to be successful in high school and beyond, both in academic and real-world settings. In this increasing complex, information-rich world, it’s up to us as teachers to help our students gain the ability to see beyond the literal, to connect to their background knowledge, to understand context, and to make that “leap” of thinking into interpretation.
Zwiers suggests that we give students frames or prompts, using academic language, to push their thinking into interpretation.
Here are just a few suggestions from his book (pp. 150-151).

Some common expressions used when interpreting:
• It really means . . . because. . .
• This is analogous to . . .
• This part means . . .
• For us in modern times, it could mean that . . .
• This . . . teaches us that . . .
• The . . . is like a . . . because . . .
• This is not literature—that’s the author’s way to describe how . . .
• This is similar to my life in . . .
• From the part where . . . I infer that . . .

Prompts that encourage students to interpret when speaking or writing:
• Explain how the concrete idea of . . . helps to describe the abstract concept of . . .
• Compare . . . with . . .
• Create a metaphor for . . .
• What can this (event, etc.) teach us about how to act today?
• What did his/her/their actions mean?
• Change the end of the story.
• What did he really mean by . . . ?
• Write an entry from the diary of . . . ?
• Come up with ways in which these two very different concepts are similar.
• Imagine you are . . . and map out your strategy for . . .

Numbered Heads Together

One of Harvey Daniels’ seven structures of Best Practice teaching is “small group activities." Here’s a very easy, no-prep-needed group activity that takes no more time to do than the whole class discussion it replaces.
Numbered Heads Together (Spencer Kagan, 1994) is an easy way to conduct a class question-and-answer session where all of the students are engaged, instead of just those few who always raise their hands to answer. This can be effectively used to work through problems, review material, discuss homework—and it’s so easy to organize! No extra prep time needed!

Here are the steps:
1. Put students in teams of equal sizes, if possible. Then, ask students in each group to number/count off.
2. The teacher poses a question/problem. The question should be formulated as a directive. Kagan gives this example: “Instead of saying ‘What is the meter in the poem?’ the teacher says, ‘Make sure everyone on the team can describe the meter in the poem.'” Another example might be “Make sure you can all make several predictions about the future behavior of the American Economy based on the paper shortage and the law of supply and demand.” It’s important to state that “everyone on the team . . .” or “all or you . . . .”
3. Heads together. Here students talk as a group—they literally “put their heads together” to discuss the answer. It is important that everyone in the group be able to articulate a response. The key is that even though not all members of the team may know the answer at first, the group has to discuss, come to a consensus, and make sure all members understand and can verbalize an answer. You may need to set a specific time limit to insure that students stay on task.
4. The teacher calls out a number. The teacher calls out a number and the group members with that number raise their hands to respond. The teacher then calls on one of the students who has a raised hand. If the answer requires several parts, the teacher can ask for other students who raised hands to add to the response.
The beauty of this activity is that in the groups each team member has to figure out the answer, in case his/her number is called. Everyone is thinking and is engaged.

Anticipation Guides

Anticipation Guides (Tierney & Readance, 1999) activate a student’s prior knowledge and also set a purpose for reading and/or viewing. Both of these things are critical for readers to do. Anticipation Guides work best if the reading/film contains controversial issues, problems, or opinions that don’t have an easy answer or solution. Note: This activity does take a little prep time to prepare the series of statements.
So here's how it works:
Students are given a series of these controversial statements, and—before reading or discussing—are asked to agree or disagree (or agree strongly, agree somewhat, disagree somewhat, disagree strongly). These statements can be used as some discussion starters after students complete the “guide.”
Once the reading has started (or is completed), students should revisit their marks of agreement/disagreement and make changes, if necessary. These before/after results and the reasons for changes can be the focus of discussions.

Below are a few of the statements I used in an Anticipation Guide for the Greek tragedy Antigone, but Anticipation Guides can be written for both fiction and nonfiction (in fact, they work well for science and social studies readings).
Some are thematic ideas from the play that I worked into antithetical statements. These were ideas that I knew we would be discussing later, as the students read the play, worked on some improvisations and group activities, and did some independent writing:
1. Nothing is worth dying for.
2. Youth should submit to elders; inexperience should submit to experience.
3. No one is above the law.
4. Let your conscience be your guide.
5. There is no happiness where there is no wisdom.

If you have any questions or comments about this or any of the ideas, please leave a comment on the blog.

Sticky Notes

One easy activity to encourage students to make inferences or just to note their thinking is to use sticky notes.

There are lots of different ways to have students use sticky notes as they read.

Here's one:

1.  Give students very small sticky notes before they read.

2.  If you are studying a specific concept (like greed, ambition, lust for power, foils, metaphors, causes of a specific event, characteristics of some concept, etc.), ask students to write some code words, pictures, labels, etc. on the sticky notes to represent the concepts.

3.  Then, as they read, the students use the sticky notes to post in the text when they note an example of the concept or whatever you want them to notice and think about as they read.

This concept can also be used for students to note places where they agree with the author (a check on the note), where they disagree (a minus), when they don't get it (a question mark), etc. The class can decide on the symbols.

As a warm-up for the following day, students can share with a partner some of their "comments."

Squares, Triangles, and Circles

Another easy idea to encourage student thinking about a text is the Squares, Triangle, and Circles strategy. As students read, listen to a lecture, or view a film, they should look for important ideas from the text/discussion/film and continually think of questions those ideas engender. This mnemonic is one way:
Students would write down notes for—
• Four ideas that square with my thinking (Square)
• Three important angles (points, ideas) from the text/discussion (Triangle)
• One question that keeps going around in my head (Circle)
You could design an graphic organizer if you like, or just tell them Squares, Triangles, and Circles, and the students just jot down the 4, 3 and 1 thoughts.

Think/Write-Pair-Share

This is a slight variation of the traditional Think-Pair-Share activity.  It can be used before reading/discussion to build background knowledge and during or after reading/lectures/presentations, etc. to encourage critical thinking and organization of thoughts.  

I've seen it used very successfully with students from primary grades to adults in a large lecture hall.  You can also use it for  vocabulary or concept development, comparison-contrast activities, sharing parts of homework, summaries, inferences, problem-solving, etc.

This particular description is from Jeffery Zwiers (Building Reading Comprehenison Grades 6-12, 2005) but you can find it described in lots of different places.

1.  Create a question or prompt that will get students to use their background knowledge, etc., and ask the to think of an answer for about 20-30 seconds, then write (quickwrite) an answer on a piece of paper.  This should take 2-3 minutes, tops.

2.  Then have students work in paris.  One person shares at a time--each partner should listen politely, show interest in his/her partner's thinking (I actually model what this should look like--eye contact, nodding assent, etc.), and ask clarifying questions if needed (this should also be modeled).  The partner talking needs to give support for his/her ideas (evidence from the book, background knowledge, experience, discussion, etc.).  The time should be limited as well.

3.  Once both partners have shared, then they turn to another pair and share.  Instead of sharing his/her own ideas, each partner should share what his/her partner said instead.

Other variations could be Think-Pair-Write-share, Read-Pair-Share, etc.

3-2-1: an admit or exit ticket idea

3-2-1--
tell students: write down 3 things you learned, 2 questions you still have, and 1 connection you'd like to share--or
3 similarities between . . . , 2 predictions about . . . , 1 something else---
the 3-2-1 topics can be anything, and if they are related to the lesson, the next day's work, the unit theme, etc. so much the better

Graphic Organizer Roulette

If you haven't checked online for graphic organizers to share with students, here is a link to one source:
http://www.eduplace.com/graphicorganizer/ If you google graphic organizers you'll get lots of sites.
At times, I have just given students a packet/bank of about 20 to keep in their notebooks, and one activity (can be group or individual) would be to pick one that might work for the content/assignment/topic and fill it out, kind of a "graphic organizer roulette." I had them recreate it so they would always have the bank to refer to. You could also have them recreate it filled out on larger sheets of paper and use that in a gallery walk. Yesterday I did a similar assignment (using visual representations instead of graphic organizers) and had them work in pairs--then once the papers were hung, one person stayed and one strayed--went around to the other stations. So the one who stayed became the docent and explained the visual to the strayers as they progressed around the room at my signal. Part way through, the pairs switched and the former docents became the strayers.

Give One, Get One

This "Give One-Get One" is an activity designed to tap into and build students' background knowledge.  It's originally from Kagan (1997)--here are the steps:

1.  Generate a topic idea (related to the text to be studied, the topic to be researched or discussed, etc.)

2. Have students fold a piece of paper in half horizontally and number 1-4 above the fold ("Ideas I will give", 5-8 below ("Ideas I got").

3.  Give students a few minutes (short) to write down 4 ideas related to the topic you generated.

4. Have students circulate and exchange their ideas for at at least three-four different ideas (from 3-4 different students).  These new ideas go on lines 5-8.  The students need to write the student's name after the new idea they got. 

5.  After several minutes (be careful not to spend too much time--they'll lose focus), the students can share out in small groups or as a whole group the ideas they got from others.  

6.  Discuss responses, then introduce the text/topic, etc.