Pink & Say LDG: Final Session

Yesterday I one-on-one conferenced with each member of my Pink & Say literature discussion group. One-on-one conferences help me assess individual comprehension and clarify misunderstandings prior to small group discussion. They also help me give confidence to students who may not know what to say in a group by encouraging them to share specific bits of great thinking when we meet as small group.

Today I taped our session together. Prior to this session, students flagged their texts for challenges Pink and Say faced individually and as a duo, and students wrote a response in their Thoughtful Logs to pull all their thinking together in writing. My role in a literature discussion group is that of a facilitator. I start the discussion by inviting students to begin their discussion about our common focus (in this text it was challenges the characters faced) and the students own the discussion from there. I get to listen and take notes on student's contributions and also pose deep questions to keep the conversation rich, if needed. Click to watch our Pink & Say LDG from today!

After our session, students returned to their desks to answer one last higher-level thinking question about the text. As the facilitator, I made sure to pose the question during our LDG session today so students could discuss and think around it prior to writing a response to it.

 

Here, one of my students has begun her final response and the other is carefully pulling his 'thinking flags' from his text to store in his Thoughtful Log prior to writing his final response.

Here are a few final responses of my students that help me assess their higher-level thinking skills of the text. Through peer discussion, students' thinking is lifted, enabling them to think at deeper levels.