Kahoots, PowerPoint Jeopardy Games, or the traditional Q&A paper review requires a good amount of prep on a teacher’s part. But what to do when you don’t have time to set up a review game? Create a review that is student-centered and fun without having to do more than give instructions and use a few supplies! The following are all inspired by getting to know you activities or party games.

Character Analysis Who Am I?

Materials: note cards

Students sit in groups. They secretly write the name of a character from the book on a note card and pass it facedown to the person on their right. They can hold it on their foreheads or just show the rest of the group and then put it facedown. Students take turns asking hypothetical questions. They way it becomes analysis is not that they are asking comprehension questions (like the traditional game), but creating hypothetical scenarios and asking what the character would do. Example:

Student with Romeo on forehead: What class would my character like in school?

Other student: Your character would probably like English. He’d probably enjoy writing the poetry.

Two Truths and a Lie

Materials: note cards

My middle school kids love this and I find it hilarious because it is just a true false quiz but they think it is so fun! (Note: there are two ways of doing this. One where they do it in groups and pass the cards with an answer key and one where they walk around and find people in the classroom.)

I assign chapters. Students get three index cards each and have to write two truths from the chapter and one lie. I review how best to get away with a lie (it should be partially true and specific). I request they put the page number down in case someone needs to check for accuracy. If groups, I divide the kids up in the amount of chapters I have and have them coordinate the answers and then create and answer key card after the number. They then pass the groups of cards from group to group, checking the answer key, and only using the book if they get them wrong. If my kids are doing this individually, I have them number the chapters on the back of one of the cards. Then I have them walk around the classroom, trying other people’s cards in pairs. They sign off on the chapter number. I require them to get two signatures per chapter.

Whole Book Heads Up!

Materials: note cards

Every Student has 5-8 note cards. Have students write words and phrases on their cards that have to do with the book. With the right prodding, students can do analysis ones. “Try to make it where one card is a symbol, one a character, one a theme, one a plot point, one vocabulary word, one a literary element, etc.” Have students in groups of three collect all the cards facing down in a stack. The students place the card on the forehead. The two other members have to give clues. The person with the cards on the foreheads have to figure out what is on the card. If they get it right, it goes in the “correct” pile. Give students 3 minutes and have each group report how many cards they got right. Switch by having the groups rotate cards and the next person in the trio be the one with the cards on the forehead. NOTE: a rule needs to be established that they slues need to come from the book. Students should not use rhyming or outside references to do the clues. Example, if a student has the word allusion for Full Tilt. The group mates should no say “rhymes with confusion” or “an example would be if I said ‘My hair is so crazy, you could call me Medusa”. It would need to be, “the literary element when Blake called another character Quasimodo.”

Whole Book Bingo

Supplies: Blank bingo cards (or just have the kids make their own by creating a 5x5 grid on notebook paper

Students fill in Bingo cards by requesting they write certain concepts for each letter. For example, B will be character names, I will be themes, N vocabulary words, G literary elements, O is objects from the story. As you walk around, glance at the cards to draw inspiration and call out elements where the BINGO blanks are the answers. Example from The Outsiders, “This a symbol of violence.” Or “This is the protagonist” Or “When Ponyboy tells Cherry about the night Johnny was assaulted and we are able to see what happened.” OR “This is a theme that would be supported by the actions of Johnny when he went in to save the children.” Because it is more about the review than the actual winning of the bingo, I like to let the kids discuss in groups with the directions to ask me if they seem unsure. After you have a kid win Bingo, inform the class that you will be doing a second Bingo for someone who has a filled up board or double bingo. That will keep the game going. I pass out little treats for the kids who win.

Student Led Socrative

Supplies: smart phones/ipads/laptops

Don't have the ability for every child to have a device? Have student partner up using phones! Divide the class up into small groups. Have groups come up with questions for the book. I like the rules where the team that creates the question get a certain amount of bonus points for every group they stump. This encourages them to create deeper, thoughtful questions. You can give them parameters as needed since Socrative lets you use multiple choice, true/false, or short answer. Open up a socrative session that is quick question. Each team presents their question, have students keep their own score, each team gets a point for every questions they get right. 

Digital Writing Roulette!

I am super stoked to tell you about how a teacher-friend and I used technology to re-imagine how Writing Roulette can be used in classrooms today.

My writing in black and Miss M's in red

I first did Writing Roulette when I took Abydos Three-Week institute about ten years before. It starts off with everyone having an image, typically I've seen The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, and then begin writing a story inspired by that image. After a little time, the teacher tells the students to stop and pass the image and paper to the next person. Everyone gets a new image with a piece of paper that began a story. The task is to pick up where the writer left off and continue the story. Four or five minutes later, they pass again, and get another new image. At the end they have created this new story. It is fun, kids have to adapt to different writing styles, they have to think imaginatively, and it helps our kids who may be more "uptight" writers learn to let go.

How to do it:

Have I got a cool way to do writing roulette using video-conferencing equipment and Google Docs! Before I get into the steps, I'll just tell you how yesterday went: A teacher-pal on another campus and I coordinated to try this out on our 7th period kiddos. In each of our respective computer labs, we had the kids assigned numbers. When the logged onto the Google drive I set up, they opened up the document that had their corresponding number. On the first page, labeled Page A, Miss M's class began typing their story about their image. On Page B, my kiddos used their image to create a story. Every 4 minutes we switched. Her kids would scroll down to B, mine up to A. And then switch again. Miss M and I helped the kids along by going over what we would want to do in each section: establish character and setting, develop conflict, build up to a climatic event, climactic event should be working to resolve main problem, resolve loose ends. at the very end we had some of the kids talk via the video conferencing equipment answering questions like : What was most challenging? How did it go for you? Which of the two did you like the most and why? Why do you think we had you do this? It was AWESOME!

What my Google folder looks like when it is ready to go! 

Afterward, I'm changing the settings to read only so that way the kids can show their parents what they did and read each other's work without accidentally deleting it. My next goal is to try this out of district. Then I want to try doing this out of state. Imagine a student in Texas and a student in Colorado writing stories together at the same time? Awesome! 

Set up:

1. Find another teacher who wants to do it with you. My first time, I decided to just do 1 class period as a trial. Coordinate lab and video-conferencing equipment (no video conferencing equipment, see if you can skype, Facetime, or even just call over the phone!)
2. Pinterest pictures like a mad dog! Here is my collection. 
3. Create a Google Drive account. In the account create a folder with a sharing setting of whoever has the link can edit. That way you can just share 1 link to the folder instead of individual doc links.
4. Create a doc file in the folder labeled 01. MAKE SURE THE FILE HAS THE SAME SHARE SETTING! On the first page have it say "Page A" nice and big. This will allow you to see if kids are on the correct pages in the computer lab. Under "Page A" write: Writer A: Examine the photo and write for the time allotted. When time is called, switch to the second page. Start writing here:
5. Add image from Pinterest. Don't forget to wrap text and adjust size.
6. Where it says "Star writing here:" press the enter button a couple times. Then hold down "ctrl+enter" This will ensure your page 2 doesn't move as the person on page A types.
7. Set up your page B just like A but with a different picture.
8. In the folder, make copies of 01. I made 16 because we had a class of 32 and I wanted us to only repeat twice. 
9. Renumber these 01-16. Change out the pictures. I then have 16 unique docs.
10. Then I just copied all 16 of them and numbered 1-32.
11. Find the link for sharing the folder in the drive by pressing the share button. Copy that. Log out of Google and test the link. Test that you can select the docs and press the pop-out so you can edit.
12. If it works, send the link to your counterpart to share with her class day of the activity. 

While you do the lesson have one teacher be in charge of having a timer. Miss M used her cell as the alarm (Ghostbusters Theme!). She and I wrote one as well. I've color coded where we switched just to give you an idea.

Pro Tip: make a template folder of all your writing roulette docs and then just copy them into a folder for your class. That way you don;t have to keep recreating the files every time you do it. 

Enjoy!

Perfect Pairings

Peanut Butter and Jelly. Chocolate and Strawberries. Steak and chimichurri.

Sometimes two things are just destined to go together. When you find two books that just make sense as pairings, an English teacher can't help but get a little excited. The Giver has long been on our district list of approved whole class novels as well as a core text (one of the two books we must teach) as well as the only book that is core for both on-level and Pre-AP ELA. Our 8th grade team put it on the summer reading last year to make room in the year for other text throughout the year. Dissatisfied with last year's pairing to How to Read Literature Like a Professor for Kids*, I was on the search for the perfect match.

 I started with my list of wants: female protagonist (all the core books have male protagonists!), can be easily connected to The Giver, and is preferably non-fiction. So what better to pair with a futuristic dystopia in which all people are the same than to pair it with a memoir in which entire groups of people were being threatened with annihilation to make the world Hitler's version of his "perfect place"? Enter one of the most beautifully written Holocaust memoirs I have ever read: The Cage by Ruth Minsky Sender.

It is obvious something major happened prior to The Community coming into being, and that major thing was most likely a genocide. What a great way to root us in the purpose of The Giver - to warn us against giving up rights for the "safety" of sameness - in the very real tragedy of The Holocaust. Add in that Jonas and Riva share much in common (character traits, the position of having to take on a parental role to siblings, etc) while the plots and settings being radically different. Match made in literary heaven!

While my students read, they will be comparing and contrasting the texts. A copy of this assignment is in my TpT store for FREE!

*Make sure you do preview How to Read Literature Like a Professor for Kids prior to ever assigning it. I purposefully had students only read the 10 chapters that applied to The Giver, which made students skip the two chapters that unfortunately reference sex, the vampires and ghosts chapter (which  while I wish they had done more hinting than blatant talk, I understood keeping the topic int he kids version), and The Shakespeare chapter that references a Woody Allen movie for no reason. Ugh! I wouldn't know of any middle schooler that would even watch a Woody Allen movie and there are so many better references to Shakespeare kids would get. And referencing the phrase "sex party" anywhere in a book designed for tweens? What editor let that go through?! I can't imagine the amount of teachers that have not assigned that book because of those two chapters, which is really unfortunate.

Abydos Conference 2015

Top three highlights of Abydos Conference 2015:
3. Alana Morris of Vocabulary Unplugged fame in one chart explained what I've been trying to explain to non-ELA teachers since the adoption of the new TEKS: all those old comprehension strategies we used to teach: Using Prior Knowledge, Making Connections, Questioning, Visualizing, Inferring, Summarizing, Evaluating and Synthesizing. When you look at the STAAR test questions, minus a handful in summarization and comparing, the questions all pop in inferencial thinking. Big takeaway: Number 12 is never coming back. The question stem will probably never be seen again. We need to move past looking at number 12 from the released test and toward the type of thinking we need to train our students to become. In order for our scores to grow instead of stagnate, we have to train the kids to be inferential thinkers.

2. Anne Stone's Classical Evaluation. Brilliant! I created a quick video on it for absent students (I literally just put my iPhone on my document cam, hit record, and posted in my conference period. AKA I totally am guilty of the black blank sides of doom. I hold my head in shame.) It helps to address the issue of under-developed support paragraphs in expository writing.
1. Kaye Price-Hawkins referred to me as "My friend, Sara" when I answered a question. Granted she was just reading my nametag, but still, squee! She took us through Dialogue with the Text which she adapted and put on a nifty bookmark for kids right here. Her website is full of priceless goodies! Go, go!

Using Technology to Effectively Plan Narratives

As March approaches, I think about how we can revisit narrative in a fresh and exciting way. How to maximize my time before STAAR while re-energizing my students and not sending them toward burnout? Enter technology! Using Answer Garden and Make Beliefs Comix, students can create prewriting that focuses on depth and reflection in a small package (exactly what the 26 line essay needs to be!) while also showing students how to have unique topics.

PROCEDURES:

1.     Post a narrative writing prompt. For example, a released STAAR prompt: http://bit.ly/1vSFLlq

2.     Send students to an Answer Garden (http://answergarden.ch/  ) you have created. Make the question where it asks students to brainstorm possible answers for the prompt. For example, if the prompt is “Write a personal narrative about a time when you had fun participating in an activity with other people. Be sure to write about your experience in detail and describe why it was memorable.” The Answer Garden question would be, “List the activity as only one or two words. EX: "fishing" For the settings of your answer garden make sure to select brainstorm.

3.     Encourage students to submit at least 5 possible answer choices. (More than 3 is important. When students brainstorm for prompts they tend to brainstorm the same top three things. The fourth and fifth ideas tend to be unique and thoughtful. )

4.     Post the results of the Answer Garden on the board. As a class, analyze the topics through a series of questions: What do you notice? Imagine if you are a rater and read hundreds of essays answering this prompt; how would you feel when you come across yet another essay on one of the most popular topics? Which topic would you like to read about and why? What do you notice about our less common topics? When did they come up in your brainstorming? How many topics should you brainstorm? How should you make the decision when selecting the topic to pick for your essay?

5.     Have each student select the topic they will pick for their prewriting.

6.     Direct students to  Make Beliefs Comix http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/ and pick the three panel.

7.     Instruct students to put the narrative outline in the three boxes. You may want to post these as the directions:

·         Think of your three boxes as one representing the three parts of your story: beginning, middle, end.

·         In the first panel, use “panel prompt” to write the setting and establish characters.

·         Write dialogue that is important/memorable.

·         Select appropriate emotions.

8.     Set an expectation of time (10-15 minutes) to complete these three panels. Give verbal reminders as you go to help students who fall behind. (i.e. By this time your should be done with your first panel and onto your second.)

9.     After the set time, instruct students to change the panel count from 3 to 4.

10.  Direct students to the rubric for the essay. You may want to bring them to STAAR Composition Rubric Way Oversimplified by Gretchen Bernabei:  http://bit.ly/1z76A61 Bring attention to what makes a 4, highlighting the depth of thought and reflective aspect of the rubric. Panel 4 will describe this reflection.

11.  Revisit the prompt. Determine the part that is asking you to be reflective. EX: “Write a personal narrative about a time when you had fun participating in an activity with other people. Be sure to write about your experience in detail and describe why it was memorable.”

12.  Instruct students to use panel four for this purpose.

13.  Students can then print a copy. To make PDF, press print and then change the settings to create a PDF that can be stored on student’s electronic portfolios.

14.  This product can then be used to use as an outline as students write their narratives.

Freebie! Questions for the ELA Classroom

My Student Teacher wanted to work on her questioning so I threw this together.

Analysis and higher level questions for in class discussion of prose. There are questions chains that scaffold upward, that are indented to reach high level analysis. Perfect "cheat sheet" to go on a clipboard or poster for your back wall. Bloom's levels of analysis and higher.

Analysis Question Stems for ELA Here!

4 Ways to Use Discovery Education Board Builder

Did you know that if your district adopted Discovery Education resources, your students can create boards on DE Streaming that give students a chance to make what is akin to webpages? Students have a unique login and are already synced up to your teacher account making it really easy for students to create their boards and then share those boards with you. No printing out or submitting to an electronic dropbox needed. Students think it is pretty neat to be able to customize the page, embed video and pictures, and work with tools that are very similar to setting up a blog. This keeps them engaged as well as gives some good techy skills. So what is DE Streaming ideal for?

Revamping a Classic

Instead of doing a brochure/poster/PowerPoint project that has been done before, have students create DE Boards. Let's face it, by the time my students have reached me, they have made brochures for multiple subjects and PowerPoints galore. I was easily able to convert a career research brochure project into a DE Board by simply adding a multimedia component. Instead of pictures, students are able to use video segments as well.

Converting Boring Assignments to Engaging

Sample of Summary Board

I know that I can't make everything thrilling. Sometimes skill-building involves practicing a skill that is itself fairly boring. When it comes to a skill like summarization - something the kids have been working on for years - it can be a little "blah". Enter DE! After introducing a couple expository summarization skills in class, I had students apply them to video segments from DE. The videos definitely held their interest. They were studying space at the time, so students were able to research concepts from the unit that interested them. It was also a great way of me offering an extension to that leaning as students watched videos on concepts - like Space-Time - far beyond the required curriculum.

My Poetry Board

Publishing Work

The final stage of the writing process is publishing. Taping over 150 essays to a wall isn't really a viable or logical form of publishing. Having students convert their essays into DE pages (students could have 1 page and add to throughout the year or have a different page each essay) is a fun way of having the student feel like they really made something special. They can even press the print button, make it PDF, and post it to the class Edmodo or what have you. 

Creating Own Teacher Board

Create your own board for an interactive lesson complete with videos. You can also add documents, quizzes, and writing prompts.