30-30-30 (Think-Aloud Scaffolding)

This activity from Jeff Zwiers' Building Reading Comprehension Habits in Grades 6-12 (2004) is called 30-30-30 because it divides a text into thirds, and the reading and thinking are scaffolded as you move through the text. In order to get through 100% of a text with enough time for you to model and for the students to both practice and do alone, make sure the passage isn’t too long. This 30-30-30 uses the “gradual release of responsibility” model first developed by Pearson and Gallagher (1983).
Elementary teachers have used “think-alouds” for decades in their reading instruction. The teacher and her students look at a picture in a children’s book, then the teacher says to herself (and to her students), “Hmmm, I wonder what this picture is about? What’s happening here?” She continues as she reads, asking herself questions—about the text, about her own thinking, about the author’s intent. The purpose is to model for the children the kinds of thinking that goes on in a good reader’s mind, to push the young readers to begin to be metacognitive.
Effective secondary teachers use think-alouds too, even if they don’t realize they do. This exercise helps students focus on the kinds of questions they should be asking themselves as they read aloud by making think-alouds the point of the lesson.
Here are the steps:
1. Make sure you have a list of reading strategies available to refer to as you model. If you have found that students are not using a specific strategy (like summarizing, questioning, using context clues, etc.) then use that strategy as you model your thinking aloud.
2. Start by modeling some prereading strategies by thinking aloud (predicting the author’s purpose, asking questions of the title, graphics, headings, etc.). Ask the students to also do some of this questioning. Besides modeling what good readers do, you are building background knowledge.
3. Now, for the first 30% of the passage, read and think aloud while your students listen and perhaps take notes. You might even mention the strategy you are using as you think aloud to yourself (and to the students).
4. For the second 30% of the passage, continue to read aloud, stopping occasionally at places where you want students to think or question. Ask students to work in pairs to actually think aloud. You might want students to share some of their think-alouds with other pairs or the class. This would also insure that they are actually using the specific strategy you have discussed. Continue with this teacher-directed reading aloud and stopping for the middle 30% of the text.
5. For the last 30% of the text, have the students read silently, taking individual notes on sticky notes and pasting the notes in the margins where they stopped to think silently about their reading. This would also make a great “share with your elbow partner” activity, so students could compare the spots where they stopped to think as well as the questions or ideas they thought about. If you think you need to give a little more structure to this independent work, you could put a minimum on the number of thinking stops the students would need to make.
6. Finally, as a postreading activity, do another think aloud where you model the process of putting it all together, either summarizing or determining the author’s purpose.

The Frayer Model

Vocabulary is essential in all content areas; in fact, for math, science, and social studies, understanding of the content often hinges on essential terms or concepts. The Frayer model (developed by Frayer, Frederick, and Klausmeier in 1969) is an efficient, engaging way for students to make meaning of a difficult, complicated concept.
You don’t really have to even copy or make a graphic organizer for the students; they can do it themselves by taking a blank piece of paper and folding it in half and then half again, resulting in 4 blocks. At the center of the opened paper, where the blocks intersect, they should draw a circle or another box in which to write the term or concept.
The four blocks can be labeled with a variety of headings, depending on the term, the level of students, the needs of the unit. Here are a few options:
• Essential characteristics/nonessential characteristics/examples/nonexamples
• Definition/characteristics/examples/nonexamples
• Definition/sentence/I think . . ./non-verbal representation (a drawing)
• What others say/what I say/what it is/what it isn’t

It’s always a good idea to try out a new graphic organizer or note-taking organizer with an easy concept that requires little background information first so students can use the format before moving on to difficult content material. Once you are certain students understand the organizer itself, then move on to the material they are to read, view, listen to, or research and from which they will use to fill out their Frayer model notes.

The Importance of Similarities and Differences

Robert Marzano, Debra Pickering, and Jane Pollock, in their book Classroom Instruction that Works (2001), give strong evidence for the effect that the individual classroom teacher has on student achievement. In this researched-based book, they describe 9 instructional strategies that affect student achievement. The strategy that they consider “the core of all learning” is identifying similarities and differences.
According to Marzano et al. (pp. 15-16), teachers enhance “students’ understanding of and ability to use knowledge” when they
• present students with explicit guidance in identifying similarities and differences
• ask students to independently identify similarities and differences
• represent similarities and differences in graphic or symbolic form

While the most recognizable similarities and differences organizer is the Venn diagram, using other lesser-used activities will often yield fresher insights. Besides comparing and contrasting, the following three are processes that require students to think at higher levels:

Classifying—this process asks students to note specific qualities or characteristics. A semantic features analysis chart or a comparison matrix that lists categories or characteristics would use this process.
Creating metaphors—similar to creating analogies, this process asks students to identify a general or basic pattern in a specific topic and then find another topic that appears to be quite different but that has the same general pattern. An example that Marzano’s group uses is comparing the function and structure of the cell to Star Trek’s Enterprise (the nucleus would be like the bridge).
Creating analogies—this process asks students to identify the relationship between pairs of concepts. Analogies are the most complex of the similarities and differences formats as they deal with the “relationships between relationships” (p. 26). Remember the old SAT analogy questions? (Newton is to force and motion as Bernouli is to air pressure.)

With these three levels of similarities/differences, modeling examples for the students before they work on finding their own analogies, metaphors, etc. will reap better results.

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.