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This strategy was found in the Regier resource, and I thought this was interesting. Based on the common game students play, Two Truths and a Lie, students will be familiar with the mechanics. The strategy works just as the name intends. Students will create three facts from what they learned and then one fib. This would make a good formative or summative assessment.

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For this reading strategy, students are tasked with relating the text to self, text to other texts, and text to world. Modifications for this activity also include text to media.

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Making Text Connections : Reading Strategies

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This type of strategy is related to the Socratic methods of student discussion.

Edutopia provides a number of resources to teachers through their website. From their Youtube channel, I found a short explanation of how this activity is designed to be performed.

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Making Connections is the first strategy outlined in the Super Six Comprehension Strategies.

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Reading Comprehension: Super Six Comprehension Strategies

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Super Six Comprehension Strategies are widely used in the Australian curriculum.

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This toolkit is designed to assist beginning teachers in understanding the "Super Six" comprehension strategies. The six strategies are: Making Connections, Monitoring, Predicting, Summarising, Questioning and Visualising. The toolkit provides pedagogical approaches to the comprehension strategies for use in whole class, small group and individual settings.

These outcomes are from the Australian Curriculum: English (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, 2014).
- Read an increasing range of different types of texts by combining contextual, semantic, grammatical and phonic knowledge, using text processing strategies, for example monitoring, predicting, confirming, rereading, reading on and self-correcting (ACELY1679)

Year 4 - Read different types of texts by combining contextual, semantic, grammatical and phonic knowledge using text processing strategies for example monitoring meaning, cross checking and reviewing (ACELY1691)

Year 5 - Navigate and read texts for specific purposes applying appropriate text processing strategies, for example predicting and confirming, monitoring meaning, skimming and scanning (ACELY1702)

Year 5 - Use comprehension strategies to analyse information, integrating and linking ideas from a variety of print and digital sources (ACELY1703)

Year 6 - Use comprehension strategies to interpret and analyse information and ideas, comparing content from a variety of textual sources including media and digital texts (ACELY1713)

According to the NSW Department of Education and Training (2010), learners make personal connections to the text with:

Something in their own life (text to self)

Another text (text to text)

Something occurring in the world (text to world)

Making Connections helps students build their understanding of themselves, others and the world in a meaningful way (Rennie, 2014).

During my first round of placement, I worked with individual students on their Discovery Time (student-centred learning) cooking projects. Asking the students questions about what they've cooked before and zoning in on a memorable moment (e.g. baking a birthday cake) activated prior knowledge and allowed them to make connections between what they brought to school with them (funds of knowledge) and the recipe at hand. This allowed for text-to-self and text-to-text connections. The step by step nature of a recipe and the students' kitchen experiences also allowed them to make predictions as to what would happen next in the recipe.
Using an anchor chart to make connections as a class helps spark ideas.
During my fourth round of placement, one way in which connections were promoted was through choosing books with a common theme. In the second week, three books were studied: Two Bad Teddies, Little Big and Feathers for Phoebe. These books have common themes of embracing differences and accepting yourself for who you are. The students were able to make text to text connections immediately for the latter two books. The characters within books also allowed students to make these types of connections.
Books with common themes allow students to make text to text connections.
The monitoring strategy involves stopping and thinking about the text, and knowing what to do (e.g. using appropriate strategies) when meaning breaks down (NSW Department of Education, 2010; Rennie, 2014).

According to Rennie (2014), monitoring is an important comprehension strategy as:

It gives the reader control over the reading process

It helps children to understand when meaning breaks down

It requires students to be aware of fix-up strategies they can employ when meaning breaks down

Students need to be aware of what they can do when they don't understand what they are reading.
The NSW Department of Education (2010) identified the following questions and statements that encourage students to self-monitor their reading. These questions should be explicitly taught to the whole class before being put onto bookmarks and posters for display in the classroom to scaffold students in their guided and independent reading.

Is this making sense?

What have I/you learned?

Should I/you slow down? Speed up?

Do I need to re-read/view/listen?

What can help me/you fill in the missing information?

What does this word mean?

What can I use to help me understand what I'm/you're reading/ viewing/hearing?

Using post-it notes to self-monitor reading.
As students read, they can code their texts with post-it notes based on their understanding (NSW Department of Training and Education, 2010).
Teachers can ask students to record parts of the text they don't understand and the strategies they attempted to try to solve the problem.
The New South Wales Centre for Effective Reading (n.d.) identified two effective self-monitoring strategies: rereading portions of the text and reading more slowly to try and figure out the meaning of unfamiliar words.

Cooking terminology impacted on students' ability to comprehend information from a recipe.
Image comes from Winch et al. (2011, p. 108).

During cooking projects, a frequent issue encountered was that students were unfamiliar with cooking terminology (e.g. beat, whisk, fold) and this hindered their comprehension. A further issue was that the recipes were written in the students' draft books and this meant they didn't have pictures to help them make meaning. One of the self-monitoring strategies I prompted students to use was rereading the sentence(s). The students took note of words they didn't understand and focussed on words they knew. For example, focussing on "eggs" in "beat the eggs" allowed them to make connections with their own experiences in the kitchen. Winch et al. (2011) suggests making connections with prior experiences, and summarising the main ingredients and steps to support upper primary students in comprehending recipes.

Good readers frequently make predictions about what is to come while they are reading (Duke & Pearson, 2002). When predicting, students " use information from graphics, text and experiences to anticipate what will be read/viewed/heard and to actively adjust comprehension while reading/viewing/listening" (NSW Department of Education and Training, 2010, p. 5).

According to Rennie (2014), predicting is an important comprehension strategy as:

It helps to set a purpose for the reading as the students compare their predictions before and after reading

It fosters student engagement in the reading process

It helps the students stay focussed and motivated

During my fourth placement, I used 'See, Think, Wonder' and 'What Makes You Say That?' as predicting strategies before the reading of books to engage the students, providing them with a purpose to read. In See, Think, Wonder, I held up the front cover of the book and asked the class what they saw, thought and wondered. I also used questioning to draw out more detail from their responses, scaffolding the students to justify their reasoning.

In terms of adapting this to Years 3-6, having the students write down their predictions and comparing them at the conclusion of reading would be beneficial, especially when students encounter more challenging texts.
Students could use a before, during and after chart to see whether their predictions are correct.
With my Year 1 class, I completed a literacy unit on Roald Dahl's George's Marvellous Medicine. Throughout our whole class reading, I used predicting (See, Think, Wonder) and questioning strategies with the students. Students drew clues from the title of the chapter, the first picture, and their knowledge of what happened last time.

The NSW Department of Education (2010) identified the following questions that the teacher or students can ask to form predictions:

What do I/you think will happen next?

What words/images do I/you expect to see or hear in this text?

What might happen next? Why do I/you think that? What helped me/you make that prediction?

Were my/your predictions accurate? How did I/you confirm my/your predictions?

Have I/you read/seen/heard about this topic anywhere else?

Using short animation clips to practise predicting.
Another successful approach I used on placement was previewing the first 30 seconds of a short animation clip and asking students to predict what would happen next. After that, I played the rest of the video and the students wrote a retell of as much as they could remember. The tune-in lessened the cognitive load for the students as they did not have to remember as much information, allowing them to focus on the predicting strategy. This can be built on as students gain confidence in their abilities.

Summarising is a shortened version of an original text which includes the most important ideas, and is restated in the student's own words (NSW Department of Education and Training, 2010; Rennie, 2014).

The summarising strategy improves students' ability to summarise text as well as their overall comprehension (Duke & Pearson, 2002; Rennie, 2014). Summarising is important in non-fiction texts as the factual information in these texts can be compared and verified (Winch et al., 2011).

In terms of whole class teaching, shared reading was used to model the summarising strategy with fiction texts. For a handful of lessons, I used this approach while reading George's Marvellous Medicine. I first modelled summarising a few pages and used both Think Aloud and a digital copy of the text so that students could see what I was doing. I underlined keywords and f ocussed on the key details of the text. During reading groups, students used story maps to draw and write out important information in the correct order sequence, in their own words.

During my fourth placement, I worked with small groups during daily guided reading sessions. An issue encountered by all groups of students was that they struggled immensely with gaining meaning from non-fiction texts. For example, the highest reading group could read a text about volcanoes fluently but had no understanding of what they had just read. As a result, my whole class teaching incorporated short non-fiction texts and students were modelled summarising to provide them with a strategy to help them extract important information. One way in which students had independent practice was from writing retells on short informational videos about forces (e.g. push and pull), which was also the inquiry topic that week.
3-2-1 is a graphic organiser that helps students summarise what they have learned from reading a non-fiction text.
In questioning, students ask and answer questions that clarify meaning and promote higher levels of understanding of the text (NSW Department of Education and Training, 2010). Questions can be generated by the students or the teacher.

Questioning is important as it is an important part of self monitoring, p rovides purpose for reading and h elps to clarify meaning (Rennie, 2014).

A GRR approach allowed me to cater to small groups of students (e.g. reading groups) who were working above level. These students required modelling and guided practice with additional strategies (e.g. monitoring and questioning) for use with non-fiction texts. Questioning allows students to generate questions to seek clarification (or self-monitor) and from a teacher's perspective, to develop higher order thinking (Duke & Pearson, 2002; Konza, 2011; Rennie, 2014). This occurred during their weekly one-hour guided reading sessions. On the days following their session, they were given time to practise these skills during daily reading lessons.

Questioning can be catered to older students by adapting higher cognitive questions to activate higher order levels of thinking in Bloom's taxonomy - moving away from literal comprehension questions in the 'remembering' phase (Konza, 2011; Winch et al., 2011). Similarly, Dymock and Nicholson (2010) differentiated between literal (or factual questions) and inferential (or 'beyond the text' questions). On placement, using different text types allowed me to explore different levels of questioning. In their research study, Eason, Goldberg, Young, Geist and Cutting (2012) found that higher level cognitive processing was required when students (aged 10-14) were presented with more complex texts (e.g. expository and informational) and question types (e.g. inferential).

Visualising is when students use their prior knowledge to create a mental image from a text (NSW Department of Education and Training, 2010; Rennie, 2014).

Visualising is important because it enables readers to make connections, and construct and monitor their reading for mistakes (Winch et al., 2011; Rennie, 2014).

Visual displays help the reader understand, organise and remember information from the text (Duke & Pearson, 2002). One way in which students can visualise information is through a story map. A story map is a graphic organiser that is used in conjunction with summarising to identify and organise important ideas. It can be used as a whole class (modelled as an anchor chart), in small groups (as a reading groups activity) and individually.
A story map improves comprehension as students organise important ideas from a text.

As a chapter book, George's Marvellous Medicine contained a lot of written information and didn't have many pictures. However, the Year 1 students were able to effectively complete a story map on the book. This demonstrates that a story map would be effective with students at Year 3-6 level as the types of texts encountered at these year levels becomes more text heavy. In terms of differentiation, the students in the lower reading groups focussed on the chapter read to them during whole class reading that particular day, while the higher groups completed the activity on everything that was covered so far.
In reading groups, an effective visualising and summarising activity was for students to use a blank template to sequence important events from the focus book.

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This toolkit is designed to assist beginning teachers in understanding the "Super Six" comprehension strategies. The six strategies are: Making Connections, Monitoring,...

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With the Literary Strategies Notebook, under Reading Comprehension, I found there were a lot of graphic organizers. Though this is technically a graphic organizer as well, this would be interesting to incorporate into my classroom. This strategy would allow the entire class to be involved in one activity rather than in their own individual assignment. We could discuss why certain students related "To Kill a Mockingbird" to "The Color Purple". What do these two text share? This format provides a foundation for other learning strategies, like discussion and reflection summaries.

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The strategy began with Lori D Oczkus, an American literary coach. Oczkus reviewed the research on reading comprehension to develop a framework for teachers to incorporate into classrooms. The book was published in 2004 and titled: Super Six Comprehension Strategies: 35 Lessons and More for Reading Success. Ocxkus wrote the book not only to help with struggling readers but to create new and creative ways to engage already proficient students.

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Lori Oczkus literacy coach; popular speaker across the United States; author of "Reciprocal Teaching

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Super Six Comprehension Strategies: 35... book by Lori D. Oczkus

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Buy a cheap copy of Super Six Comprehension Strategies: 35... book by Lori D. Oczkus. Hands-on help for improving both struggling and proficient students reading comprehension through simple, yet creative and effective teaching strategies. This book... Free Shipping on all orders over $15.

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While researching, I found this blog by Teacher Starter. This website includes free graphic organizers.

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A "super" anything has got to be great, right? It's an adjective that is thrown around quite often, but in the case of the "Super Six Comprehension Strategies", it is an adjective used most fittingly.

The concept of six key comprehension strategies was first articulated in American literacy researcher Lori Oczkus' book "Super Six Comprehension Strategies: 35 Lessons and More for Reading Success" (2004). Oczkus translated a few decades of comprehension teaching and learning research into a clear framework that teachers could take into their classrooms.

As with most any conceptual framework that is used across a variety of educational contexts, the labels and specifics of the strategies that make up the Super Six have evolved from Oczkus' original model and morphed into a few different variations.

Super Six Comprehension: An Overview and Teacher Resources

This post looks at the six strategies that are used most commonly in classrooms today and provides links to high-quality comprehension resources for both lower primary and upper primary lessons.

Many of our resources contain spelling and language variations for both British/Australian English and U.S. English within the downloadable files so you can use the version that is right for your class and your school. Have a look at this helpful article to find out how to change the language settings of your Teach Starter account.

1. Making Connections

When encountering a text students make connections between the text their own experiences and understandings. Framed within these three concepts:

students can ask themselves how the text may relate to something in their life, to another text that they know, or to something from the real world.
Making Connections Activities & Resources:
[resource:58978][resource:58983][resource:10999][resource:598167]

2. Predicting or Inferring

While the term used for this strategy is different across various implementations of Super Six Comprehension, the premise is similar.
Students use 'clues' from the text (in the form of words and/or pictures), combined with their own knowledge and experiences to anticipate what will happen next.
We have collections of resources that use both "predicting" and "inferring" terminology so that you can select the resources that are right for you, your class and the activity you are using them for.
Prediction Activities & Resources:
[resource:71180][resource:38436][resource:71176][resource:71183][resource:598167][resource:71186][resource:17086][resource:535816]
Inference Activities & Resources:
[resource:42025][resource:42021][resource:42015][resource:42007][resource:39102][resource:22165][resource:574288][resource:535826]

3. Questioning

In this comprehension strategy students ask and answer questions to clarify the meaning of the text and deepen their understanding. When you centre questioning activities around the familiar open-ended prompts of who, what, when, where, how, why, which, students will quickly assert their understanding and identify any gaps in their comprehension of the text.

Questions can be posed by a teacher, by their peers or by the students themselves.
Questioning Activities & Resources:
[resource:426858][resource:3091][resource:598167]

4. Monitoring

When monitoring, students reflect on and assess their understanding as they progress through the text. In this meta-cognitive process, students may ask themselves questions like "Is this making sense?" or "Do I need to read this again?".

While the process of monitoring asks students to identify hurdles and barriers, students also benefit from connecting this comprehension strategy with explicit strategies to help them past their hurdle.

Should they be struggling with decoding an unfamiliar word or sentence (knowing what the word or words are), students may benefit from prompts such as these reading strategies bookmarks. When students struggle with comprehending the meaning of a word or sentence, provide support through the use of the five other Super Six comprehension strategies.
Monitoring Activities & Resources:
[resource:598167][resource:16942][resource:13107]

5. Visualising

Visualisation provides both teachers and students with another means to extend their exploration of the text and deepen understanding. This comprehension strategy asks students to create and describe an image in their mind, centered around a place, situation or character in the text.

Using the five senses is a great way to scaffold student comprehension through visualising.
Visualising Activities & Resources:
[resource:47640][resource:13098][resource:598167]

6. Summarising

Summarising asks students to reflect on the text and communicate their understanding of it.

When summarising students may complete one or more of the following:

recount the text in their own words

identify the main idea, topic or purpose

list key words or phrases

identify structural elements of the genre.

Summarising Activities & Resources:
[resource:43661][resource:598167][resource:43655][resource:43646][resource:35754][resource:535796][resource:577006]

Additional Super Six Comprehension Resources:

The Super 6 Comprehension Strategies provide an excellent framework for focused comprehension teaching and learning in your classroom. While there are resources for each specific strategy given above, you'll find that the six strategies work beautifully in combination with one another, as your students grow in their mastery of reading and comprehension.

There are over 200 primary resources in our Reading & Comprehension collection, but here is a selection of the best for learning and teaching Super Six (my favourite being the Reading Detectives Resource Pack!).

[resource:25760][resource:18469][resource:41232][resource:572602][resource:568034][resource:566199][resource:377335][resource:62965][resource:330549][resource:62501][resource:542281][resource:330180]

Do you use the Super Six Comprehension Strategies as a framework for learning in your classroom?

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What are the "Super Six" Comprehension Strategies?

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What are the Super Six Comprehension Strategies and how do I teach them in my class?

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Between Socratic and Fishbowl Strategies

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Between Socratic and Fishbowl Strategies

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I liked this resource created by Dana Levesque and Val Grenawalt.

The Socratic and Fishbowl strategies allow student discussions to go deeper allowing for more thought while traditional discussion often made students feel like the teacher had 'one true answer'.

Traditional discussion strategies typically depended on teachers to take the lead, whereas Socratic and Fishbowl strategies often require students to direct the discussion (the teacher merely facilitates as necessary).

Between the two strategies, they vary in how they are executed which is important. For the Fishbowl strategy specifically, students who are more introverted may prefer this method to Socrative strategies.

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Classroom Discussions: Fishbowl using Today's Meet

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While researching Fishbowl strategies, I stumbled upon this book written by Kelly Gallagher. Another book I have by Gallagher is Readicide: How Schools are Killing Read and What You Can Do About It. These books provide insight to teachers on how to better their role in the classroom, which I can see fitting under Teacher Input in our Literary Strategies Notebook presentation.

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In his new book,In the Best Interest of Students: Staying True to What Works in the ELA Classroom , teacher and author Kelly Gallagher notes that there are real strengths in the Common Core standards, and there are significant weaknesses as well. He takes the long view, reminding us that standards come and go but good teaching remains grounded in proven practices that sharpen students' literacy skills.Instead of blindly adhering to the latest standards movement, Gallagher suggests:Increasing the amount of reading and writing students are doing while giving students more choice around those activitiesBalancing rigorous, high-quality literature and non-fiction works with student-selected titlesEncouraging readers to deepen their comprehension by moving beyond the four corners of the text-Planning lessons that move beyond Common Core expectations to help young writers achieve more authenticity through the blending of genresUsing modeling to enrich students' writing skills in the prewriting, drafting, and revision stagesResisting the de-emphasis of narrative and imaginative reading and writingAmid the frenzy of trying to teach to a new set of standards, Kelly Gallagher is a strong voice of reason, reminding us that instruction should be anchored around one guiding question: What is in the best interest of our students?

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In his new book,In the Best Interest of Students: Staying True to What Works in the ELA Classroom , teacher and author Kelly Gallagher notes that there are real strengths in the Common Core standards, and there are significant weaknesses as well. He takes the long view, reminding us that standard...

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In this image, students share what they feel is 'worth' talking about in relation to what they are learning. This helps teacher formulate discussion since students are already identifying the topics they find important.

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I found the idea interesting since this strategy could be used for assessment as well as in evaluating how important students gauge the material. This idea of students telling the teacher what they think is 'worth' it is powerful. Even if students write things like "none of this is important", teachers can learn from responses like this.

Additionally, since this strategy is flexible, the question does not have to be a matter of 'worth'. Teachers can ask why the information they learned is 'valuable' or 'relevant'.

In this resource, the students were keeping composition books filled with sticky notes with their written thoughts to reflect on chapters.

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An enormous part of my teaching philosophy is centered around teaching students to question the "why" of what we learn. Not necessarily why are we learning, but why does what we learn ? How does what we do in our classroom apply to their lives? I sincerely believe that if students cannot walk away from my class each day able to answer those questions, then I need regroup and question the purpose of my lessons.

Kelly Gallagher , a high school teacher in California, is an advocate for getting students to think critically, read deeper into various texts, and along with several other educational rockstars, structures his classroom according to the workshop model.

In his book, De eper Reading he discusses the "Say/Mean/Matter" chart as a way to make any text relevant to students in addition to helping them be come critical readers and thi nker s.

I regularly use this strategy in several ways in my classroom which consistently provides me with opportunities to keep my lessons meaningful to my students. What I love most about using it is that it provides students with an opportunity to focus on what they are learning and why/how it matters. This also shows them that EVERYTHING we read, write, discuss, etc., has a purpose.

I recently completed novel studies with my students and was able to implement the "Say/Mean/Matter" concept with all 3 of my grade levels. In my experience, I learned that I needed to provide more scaffolding for my younger students versus my Juniors who were more equipped to take the concept and run with it. It seems like the older they get, the more eager they are to share their opinions and challenge what they read.

For my Freshmen

Earlier this school year, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to attend a professional development session that centered around Kelly Gallagher's Say/Mean/Matter strategy. I was able to scaffold this lesson by targeting specific pieces of the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird , a few at a time in order for students to focus on examples of social injustice. Over a series of impromptu class discussions and informal reading/writing responses to various texts about inequity, I broke each section of Say/Mean/Matter down so that students were familiar with applying this idea to various forms of literature. Once we reached the pivotal point in the novel, we completed this with partners they chose (and some they didn't), using sticky notes to frame discussion.

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From there, we completed our graphic organizer together using our stickies from the day before. Students were asked to expand on the ideas they came up with together. After modeling my discussion notes and conferencing with students, their responses clearly showed that these examples of social injustice meant something to them. It became more than just an assignment to them, it was a chance for them to safely explore, discuss, and write about opinions that mattered to them.

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Eventually, this led to a Socratic Seminar that took us 2 full class periods to complete. Every student was engaged and ready to share their ideas and ask questions because it was relevant to them. Not only was this a chance for their voices to be heard, but they truly cared about what each student had to say and remained open-minded throughout the process.

A Small Snapshot

This was just one of the incalculable ways to foster relevance and meaning to students that perfectly aligns with the benefits of teaching through the workshop model. Now more than ever, what we do as educators is of the utmost importance. By building these moments of discovery into our lessons, we allow students to create and develop meaning for themselves. The students are our purpose. Our profession centers around helping them develop and unleash their potential. Once students realize what we teach has applicability and value, there is no limit to what they can accomplish.
I would love to know other ways you make your lessons meaningful and relevant to students in your classroom in the comments! Gena Mendoza currently teaches Freshmen, Sophomore PreAP, and Junior English in Texas. She is passionate about teaching her students to use their powers for good and not evil in her classroom. When not pouring over any written or spoken word by Jason Reynolds, or preparing her family for their next Disney adventure, you can catch her Tweeting/Retweeting at @Mrs_Mendoza3 on Twitter.

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An enormous part of my teaching philosophy is centered around teaching students to question the "why" of what we learn. Not necessarily why are we learning, but why does what we learn matter? How does what we do in our classroom apply to their lives? I sincerely believe that if students cannot walk away from...

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This resource from We Are Teacher aligned with how I imagined my classroom discussion to be organized. With some tweaking, like in providing students with a smaller question bank to get them used to this style of discussion, and time to think/write their answers, I could see this being how I use the Fishbowl strategy in my classroom!

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There may be nothing more exciting than watching students engage in a class discussion. When their eyes light up and they walk the tightrope between actively listening to their peers and giving voice to an idea they can't wait to share, the room just comes alive. But, class-wide discussions don't always work.

We all know the kids who casually avert their eyes in the hopes of not being called on, just as we know the kids who can't seem to take a breath long enough to let others find their voice.

This winter I tried to address these issues by restructuring classroom discussions using a technique called "the fishbowl." Suddenly, even the most reticent students found they had a voice.

Here is a basic rundown on how fishbowl discussions work.

First, present students with a list of questions to think about.

These questions will be the focus of the discussion.

The questions should be broad and open-ended. As much as possible they should be questions that have more than one possible answer, questions that students can debate rather than answer in short declarative sentences. For English this means questions about theme rather than plot. In science it means questions about systems rather than components. For music it means questions about composition rather than chromatic scales.

By getting the questions ahead of time, every student is empowered to come prepared with something to add to the conversation.

Create groups of five or so students.

These are the groups who will enter the "fishbowl" together to talk about their assigned topic while the rest of the class watches them talk.

Here it is important to consider past academic performance as well as personality. I try to create groups that are comprised of a mix of my highest achievers and those who might be struggling a bit, my most reticent speakers and my most talkative kids. This allows the talkative students to work on active listening, while challenging the quiet ones to give voice to their ideas.

Prepare the system to pick groups on the day of the discussion.

In one pile, place slips of of paper with the groups of five students. In a second pile place the individual questions from the study guide.

On the day of the discussion pull one paper from the pile of groups, and one from list of questions. The group heads to the five hot seats to discuss the question they have been given. The rest of the class watches without saying a word. With the focus on just five students, even the most reluctant speakers rise to the challenge and voice their views.

Instruct the rest of the class to take notes on what they hear.

This is a key element to keeping the class involved while the "focus five" discuss the material.

I tell my students to focus their notes on three things: points people make that they think are particularly interesting or insightful, points they would like clarified, or points they would like to challenge. If you like, the notes each student is taking can be collected and checked for a quick grade. This helps ensure that everyone is staying involved even when it is not their turn to speak.

After a given amount of time, open the conversation to the class.

In my experience, students who have been forced to remain silent during the fishbowl portion are excited to join in.

Here they use their notes to praise students for their insights, and offer questions meant to gain more clarity or correct errors. We start with the praise first, making sure each of the "focus five" hears some positive feedback about their contributions. Then we move on to clarifying questions and eventually assertions the class would like to challenge. This is where some of the most interesting discussion happens.

Keep track of each student's contribution to assess their grade.

The first time I just used a broad tally system-a mark for entering the conversation, a check for making an insightful comment, a question mark for erroneous information. A simple rubric could work as well, perhaps 1-5 scores for contributing regularly, connecting to other's statements, evidence to support their claims.

Feedback from students has been really positive. "I prepared a lot more for this discussion than for others," one student wrote. "You said there would be no place to hide, and after watching the first group go I realized you weren't kidding." Another student wrote simply, "I had no idea she could talk. She is really freaking smart."

By the end of a successful fishbowl discussion you will have heard from every student in the room. If all goes well, they will all feel accomplished and engaged, and you will have a clear understanding of who gets it, and who may need a bit more help.
Have you tried fishbowl discussions in your classroom? What was your experience like? Come and share in our WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook. Plus, tips for getting students to ask better questions about books.

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How I Use Fishbowl Discussions to Engage Every Student

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There may be nothing more exciting than watching students engage in a class discussion. When their eyes light up and they walk the tightrope between actively listening to their peers and giving voice to an idea they can't wait to share, the room just comes alive. But, class-wide discussions don't always work.

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Morphemic Analysis Routine and Morphology

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Morphemic Analysis Routine and Morphology

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In learning vocabulary, instruction should be explicit and there must be multiple opportunities to practice. This was something we reviewed in class.

The resource I selected included the Frayer model and content mapping, ideas that were central to some of the strategies outlined in our Literacy Strategies Notebook. Additionally the resource specified Morphemic Analysis Routine, which uses morphology. Morphology is not central to any of the strategies outlined in our Literacy Strategies Notebook.

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I found this idea on the Keys to Literacy website which is ran by Joan Sedita.

I absolutely love the idea of incorporating this into my classroom. The visual aide would help students in exploring the 'insides' of vocabulary words. This little project accompanied with a worksheet prompting students to define the root/prefixes/suffixes would help students see the morphological make-up (the smallest meaningful unit of sound).

I acknowledge that this idea may be a bit too simplistic outside of maybe a 6th grade class, but I feel that students in high grades need to take time to be creative. I learned roots/prefixes/suffixes in the 9th grade - so I do not think this would be specific to an elementary class either.

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A Resource for Teachers on Teaching Morphology for Literacy

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A Resource for Teachers on Teaching Morphology for Literacy

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One of the ideas form this resource that I thought was interesting was that they encouraged teachers to read aloud. I have not seen or heard of any secondary teachers reading text aloud to their students (they do provide audiobooks now, but is that really the same thing?), however, I have heard from you and one of my other course professors that this strategy would be helpful for students.

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This strategy for formative assessment is found in the Regier resource. The name Whip Around aligns with how the activity is executed. The teacher gives students time to either write down how they feel about the assignment or facts they found relevant. Then the teacher quickly 'whips' around the room having students read one of their responses. This should help the teacher figure what students paid attention to before moving onto another activity.

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In my classroom I try to check for understanding in Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down. I wait until all student have responded, and I use this anytime I'm about to switch from one slide to another OR when I'm about to move to another topic for the lesson.

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Ziplet is an online tool I used recently that helped with my Exit/Entrance Tickets in lesson planning. This assessment tool could be used regularly throughout class because students do not need to sign in to answer the question. The downside to this software is that you can only ask one question. I usually had parts a,b,c for students to answer, but the format is just not friendly enough for like a questionnaire. Either way, this technology tool helped me quickly check for understanding during a lesson.

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This resource was compiled by Natalie Regier, a teacher of 20 years. Over their career, Regier took on many different roles, but now wants to help teachers in developing their own classrooms. This specific resource was published in 2018 for Oklahoma CareerTech.