Speed Reading

Today the students took their lists of complaints from yesterday and highlighted the top 8-10. Then they ranked them in order of personal importance, chose one, and wrote a couple of paragraphs describing the problem as best they understood it. My original plan was for them to read it to a small group and have the other kids ask questions, but this morning as I was walking the dog I had a different idea.

I arranged the tables in my room into a loose circle with chairs on the inside and on the outside. Once their writing was complete, They paired up, with one student on the outside and the other across the table on the inside of the circle. We set the timer for 1 minute and 20 seconds, and at the beep, the kids on the outside read their writing and when they were through, their partners asked questions. The authors were not to answer the questions, but rather record them on the back of their sheets.

When the timer went off, the inside person moved to the right and another student took the vacated seat. This time, it was the inside group's turn to read and the outside folks asked questions. And so it went for 15 minutes or so. By the end of class, each student had read his or her work four or five times and had a list of ten questions or so.

It was great! The kids were very focused and engaged. It was quick, peer-centered, and there was lots of movement, but clearly directed. Before we began, I read them an example I had written, which was about the incursion of coyotes in our urban area. I deliberately made it a little vague, and we brainstormed questions as the timer ticked down. They figured out that they could ask questions about both the facts of the situation and my stance on it, and I advised them that a good question might always be "What can you do about it?"

What indeed? That will be the next lesson.

(Click here for today's sample of my 6th grade students' response to the SOLSC challenge.)