SL.7.1 - Fishbowl Discussion Activity

My co-worker, Erin, shared a great activity called a Fishbowl to help students truly practice the art of collaborative discussions. We have done several lessons about body language and purposeful talk so today was a day for students to truly be speakers and listeners and develop good habits of both.  These are the behaviors we have discussed over the past several weeks that students were expected to apply today during their fishbowl discussions.

I picked 5-6 students to be my 'fish inside the fishbowl' who would discuss with one another the question I posed about the book we have been reading called Touching Spirit Bear. (I asked each group 3 total questions.) Students who were not in the fishbowl were observers of the fish discussion, although I selected 5-6 of the observers to formally observe one particular 'fish' to monitor that student's contributions to the discussion. These formal observers used the sheet you see below. Every student got to be a 'fish' and every student got to formally observe another 'fish' through the 4 rounds of questions.

Students who discussed sat in the middle and had a copy of Touching Spirit Bear to reference and support their thinking. Students on the outside observed the discussion. Careful listening was in order for all students as I eventually opened up the discussion to the whole class after the conversation in the fishbowl 'died off'. (P.S. - It was Favorite Sports Team Day today at school so some kids wore hats.)

Formal observers received this observation sheet to record the contributions of one particular fish.

Here you can see one of my students watching her 'fish' with her blue observation sheet in front of her. She carefully listened to his contributions and recorded what he said and his behaviors.

As I mentioned earlier, I opened up the discussion to the rest of the class after the students in the 'fishbowl' were done discussing. I was pleasantly surprised with how many students wanted to respond to things that were said 'inside the fishbowl'. Some of our discussions for one question lasted 10 minutes. It was focused, respectful, and meaningful discussion!

The activity started off very slow and awkward. These kids are great at chatting in the hallway and at lunch about the latest gossip and who likes who, but when it comes to purposeful discussion intended to help our brains grow - they struggle. With this activity, students picked up on the tone, the organization, and the focus of this discussion and really impressed me. They sounded like miniature adults! Many students asked when we could do it again. I will definitely keep this discussion activity in my bag of tricks. Tomorrow I plan to have students self-reflect on the process so students can recognize their strengths and areas to grow for next time.

Taking Notes, Donorschoose Books, & Thanking Our Donors

We continue to embark on taking notes to gather information from multiple sources about our focused topic. The topic I'm modeling with is spirit bears, as it relates well to the novel Touching Spirit Bear that is guiding a lot of our learning we are doing this quarter. Yesterday I modeled taking notes from watching a video about spirit bears. Today I modeled how to take notes from a website. This is the website I used:

As I read from the website, I noted key words and phrases that I felt were important for the public to know about spirit bears. I recorded those ideas on the graphic organizer below (and on the back!)

After I modeled, students tried on the skill of reading from a website and taking notes about circle justice, another topic from novel Touching Spirit Bear. I sent the website to their email to read online. 

Students added notes to their graphic organizer from this second source. This graphic organizer is one all disciplines in our school are using to help scaffold the writing process of any informative/explanatory writing task in any subject area. By consistently using the same graphic organizer, our hope is that kids will eventually be able to create one from scratch as they organize their writing in the future when we teachers are not around or aren't allowed to help them (a.k.a. taking the Smarter Balanced Assessment!)

 Notes that didn't fit on the front were written on the back.

Here is an example of one student's notes from the website about restorative justice/circle justice. Many students made comparisons to this factual information and how Ben Mikaelsen used these facts as part of his novel. My favorite quote from today was, "So, Miss Bongers - spirit bears and circle justice are real things? I thought Ben Mikaelsen just made those things up for his story!" Helping kids see these connections - that real authors pull in facts to write fictional stories will help as we draft our own narratives later.

After students finished reading their second source and taking notes, they read Ch. 6 from Touching Spirit Bear. In this chapter, Cole (the protagonist) encounters the spirit bear for the first time. There is also narrative in this chapter about Cole's circle justice hearing. Our research helped inform students about both of these topics so that their comprehension of the text would increase.

In our next class, students shared the notes they recorded from restorative justice website. Before they discussed with one another, we reviewed our rules for collaborative discussions.

Partners practiced these behaviors during their discussions.

Students recorded any facts their partners shared that they did not have on their own sheet.

Then we came together as whole class, and I had every student share one thing they learned from the website as a way to 'hear all voices'. This was the final set of notes for one student after independent work, partner chats, and whole class discussion.

In other news, our shipment of new books came from Amazon as a result of our project getting funded at Donorschoose.org. Check out all the great new titles that will now be in the hands of our 7th grader! Thank you to all of the community members (parents, grandparents, friends, and strangers) who donated to this project. I wanted to give a special shout-out to U.S. Cellular who funded the projects of MANY teachers all over the country. Thank you for supporting education!

The kids were excited to get their hands on these new books today!

 (PS - It's Superhero Day at our school, so some of our students have costumes and hats on!)

I am very grateful to the donors who were so kind to help fund our project. Because we want them to know how thankful we are, we wrote thank you letters to all of them. So, to Mom & Dad, Libby Jones, Pat Jones, Michelle Hase, Dusty Jacobson, Meghan Cropp, Heather Trevino, and U.S. Cellular - THANK YOU for keeping the excitement of reading alive in our 'tweenagers'!

And one more picture because one of my 7th graders ROCKED Superhero Day with his pink tights and cape:

Lovin' Me Some LDGs

My biggest area for growth this year within the Comprehensive Literacy Model is my effectiveness as a facilitator of literature discussion groups (LDGs). I continue to learn more and more with my literacy coach, Candice Johnson, and over time, LDGs have become one of my favorite groups to plan for when it comes to small-group instruction. You want me to help kids to become deeper thinkers and discussers of text? Um, yes, please! I'm in!

Last week, I did a book introduction and orientation to launch Pink and Say by Patricia Polocco with six of my students. Not only does the Civil War content of the book overlap with our study of people in social studies, but it is also a text that has deep meaning on a variety of levels. These kinds of rich, culturally responsive texts are exactly what we want in the hands our our kids as often as possible. Then give them the chance to flag their thoughts and discuss the text with one another and the experience becomes even more powerful. I have goosebumps just typing about it.

Today I met with students to facilitate their discussion of the first half of the book. I gave students a purpose for reading prior to our first meeting and that was for them to flag examples of loyalty and to write a response (using their flagged thoughts as their guide) in their Thoughtful Logs. What's great is that other than calling the group together at our side table with their materials (Pink and Say text and Thoughtful Logs) and saying, "Let's start our LDG by focusing on our theme of loyalty. Who would like to start the discussion?" - I really had to do nothing more. The group ran itself, and I could sit back and take anecdotal notes on the kinds of contributions my students made with one another about the text. Although the discussion started on the topic of loyalty, it opened doors for the kids to talk about a variety of inferences, wonderings, and connections on a variety of topics and levels. What's great is that students were problem-solving together, and I just got to take notes and smile.

After about 10 minutes of discussion, I finally had to stop the group because I was convinced they would have talked for another half hour had I let them. I had never been so happy to hear moans of disappointment from my students in my whole life! :) It was my turn to briefly introduce the second half of the book, locate a few potential problem areas, and establish their purpose for reading. This time, I wanted students to flag some of the challenges Pink and Say went through both individually and as a pair. You'll see in the picture below, I put a post-it on the inside back cover of each student's book. Our district calls this a 'common focus flag'. It reminds students what to flag for (that will lead our discussion later on). Because it's on the inside back cover, the focus flag never gets lost on a page. It just stares kids in the face the whole time to ensure students have a common focus for reading (in addition to their other thoughts). This post-it below reminds kids to 1.) flag challenges they find in the text (goal = find at least 3), 2. Write a two paragraph response in their Thoughtful Log after they've finished reading that includes a one-paragraph summary and one-paragraph about the challenges Pink and Say faced.

Students then went back to their desks to read the rest of Pink and Say independently. Both these readers are flagging challenges they've found while reading. In this picture, you see the light yellow 'common focus flag' sticking out of the back of the boy's Pink and Say text below.

Here are two of the flags he put in his book. In addition to flagging areas in the text that serve as evidence of our LDG's common focus, students are also encouraged to flag anything else they believe would spark deep conversation with the group. I love how he flagged and wrote Pink called slavery 'the sickness' and can already hear the deep discussion that could step from such a metaphor. What's even better is that the thought came from HIM, not me as his teacher. If we want students to be deep, independent thinkers of text, we have to provide kids with opportunities like LDGs to let them practice...and shine!

Here is another student's flagged text. On the left is her own flag for a challenge she discovered while reading. On the right, you can see the 'common focus flag' I stuck in the inside back cover of each student's book to remind them of their task/s.

Tomorrow students will continue to work on this assignment during independent reading time. While they work, I will do one-on-one conferences with each student in the LDG to establish their levels of independent comprehension and clarify any misunderstandings. This is also a good time to have a student read short sections of a page to check for fluency or word-solving strategies. By meeting with each student prior to our next group LDG session, all students can feel more confident about their verbal contributions. For my shiest readers, it is during our one-on-one time that I can say to them, "THAT was some really good thinking. Can you share that tomorrow when we discuss this text?" When they nod with a smile, you've just made a mini-pact to ensure their voice gets heard!

Painting Pictures and Inferring with Poetry & a Differentiated Immigrant Lesson

As we continue to learn more and more about poetry, we continue to add more and more to our anchor chart!

Last week, I read the book Twilight Comes Twice by Ralph Fletcher as a mentor text for the idea that poetry paints pictures with words. I created a Thoughtful Log prompt sheet to help students expand this idea in their Thoughtful Logs. I pulled two stanzas from the book and asked students to draw the picture that came into their mind when they read the stanzas. Here are some of their visual reflections! (Note: Require kids to use colored pencils and encourage them to blend colors and use the shading techniques they've hopefully learned in art class. I think the blending really helped to capture the beauty in the kids' pictures.)

On a different day last week, we also discussed that when you read poetry, you will often need to INFER to understand the poem at a deeper level. I modeled this by first analyzing clues in a poem:

 I highlighted the clues that helped me infer who the author was writing to in this poem and recorded my thoughts. As the poem went on, I got a clearer and clearer picture in my head! A hamster!

For guided practice, I gave students a different poem and had students highlight the clues that helped them infer the topic of the poem.

 Students also were encouraged to record their inferences as they read so I could see evidence of their inferences changing over time.

 Then I had students draw a picture of what they believed the topic of the poem was. If students truly paid attention to ALL of the clues, they would have drawn a group of baby bunnies like these students did:


Some students thought the topic was baby mice...


 But if they had truly read and thought about all of the clues, the 'ears in a tangle' clue is what truly helps to clarify the topic of the poem.

After our lesson, I challenged students to write a poem in which the audience would need to infer what the topic is just based on the clues. Here were some of their poems. Can you infer the topic?

This student even played with the shape of his words (which was something we had anchored on our poetry anchor chart earlier last week too!):

 This student wrote clues to describe a character from the Warriors series (which many kids in my class are obsessed with, by the way!):

Last week we also started writing color poems to continue practicing the idea that when we write poetry, we want to appeal to our audience's senses and require them to infer! I modeled this by selecting a color and recording nouns for things we see, taste, feel, smell, and hear that are associated with that color. (Eventually we will delete the color name when we revise and publish, but for now, it help kids stay in the frame of mind of the color they selected.)

Students then selected a color of their own. I encouraged basic colors only (since it's hard to come up with a lot of ideas for mauve or lime green, etc.!) When students got to the part of their pre-writing sheet where it asked them to record feelings associated with their colors, students referred to their Thoughtful Logs where we had recorded ideas from Dr. Seuss' Many Colored Days mentor text. It was a great resource to link students with their prior learning!

Here are a few samples after day one:

Today during Writer's Workshop, I modeled how to revise our initial ideas by adding descriptive adjectives before our nouns and extending each idea into a phrase.

Tomorrow we will conference with our peers, and on Wednesday we will publish in the computer lab!

*****

In Social Studies last week, we read the story The Whispering Cloth by Peggy Dietz Shea to discuss the emigration of refugees from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand.

I used this slide to explain the historical context for the story. (And yes, I noticed I spelled 'clothes' instead of 'cloths' in the last sentence! ARGH!)

I had students glue the following chart into their Thoughtful Logs. In a previous lesson, I had modeled for students how to record facts from a text and respond, and students completed a chart similar to this one for guided practice. To continue on with the gradual release of responsibility, I didn't record anything while reading this book. Instead, students were responsible for pulling out and recording important information and responding as we read together.

Here are some of the great responses students recorded during our lesson:

Today in Social Studies, I handed out leveled readers to all my students. Four immigrant groups were featured in the readers: Mexican, Irish, Chinese, and German-Jewish. What's great about these readers is that they are organized identically but their content and complexity are different. You can see in the group below, one student is reading about the Irish, another is reading about German-Jewish immigrants, another is reading about the Chinese, and the fourth student is reading about Mexican immigrants! (Thank you, National Geographic, for designing readers this way!)

All students read pgs. 6 - 9 in their readers and made a graphic organizer in their Thoughtful Logs to record all the reasons their immigrant group left their homeland. Students were told they would be responsible for teaching their peers about their immigrant group so it was important to organize their information to help them remember.

After students read their pages and created their organizers, I had them get in 'immigrant-alike' groups to compare their information and either add to or revise their graphic organizers based on their discussion of their immigrant group. These students discussed why Chinese immigrants left their homeland.

These students discussed Mexican immigrants' reasons for leaving Mexico.

These students discussed why German-Jewish immigrants left Germany.

And I worked in a more guided setting to discuss reasons Irish immigrants wanted to leave Ireland.

Then I put students in 'immigrant-different' groups. Students were in groups of 4, with each of the 4 immigrant groups represented within the group. First, students color-coded their own group's reasons for leaving. This student used green to indicate all the reasons the Irish left their homeland.

Through discussion, students added reasons to their notes using the matching color for each immigrant group based on what they learned from one another.

Here you can see this student indicates the German-Jewish immigrants reasons for leaving Germany using blue. In green, she added what she learned from her peer about Irish immigrants. New reasons were added to the page and check marks were placed next to reasons that could be categorized for more than one group!

 Through differentiation, note-taking, and social discourse, students were in charge of their own learning with each other. Tomorrow we will explore the challenges immigrants faced, using a similar format!