| Classroom Strategy | Description |
| Save the Last Word for Me | Collaborative strategy for analysis w/ benefits of equity in speaking and listening time. Helps to clarify student understanding, can be used with wide range of sources collaboration, student-centered, equity |
| OPTIC | An organized approach for examining a visual more closely. Click here for the OPTIC Word.doc |
| Four Corners | Label each corner of the room "strongly agree" "agree" "disagree" and "strongly disagree (or another set of responses). Ask students a series of questions and have them relocated based on their response. Students share reasoning within groups then can share out. |
|
(AVID Unit) |
Format for discussion or debate of a topic. This format allows students to change their side, or move to "unsure" or show classmates made a strong argument by moving their location. |
|
(AVID Unit) |
These aren't 2007's Cornell notes. Most teacher's aren't getting the most out of this strategy. Click here for the Cornell Notes Template. |
| World Café | Collaborative, small group structure for problem-solving. problem solving, collaboration |
| Create a Consensus | Promotes students in hosting conversations about questions that matter. These conversations link and build on each other as students move between groups, cross-pollinate ideas, and discover new insights into the questions or issues that are most important in your class. |
| Kinesthetic Word Web | A strategy that kids up and moving with the content of the lesson. Picture a word web on paper. Now turn the outer ovals on the web into students and imagine their arms touching the person's shoulder in the center oval. |
| Placemat Strategy | Placemats boost student engagement and discussion. This strategy allows for every group member to have a role, and for every group member to have a "place" in the discussion. discussion, Chalk Talk, reflection |
|
(AVID Unit) |
In a Socratic Seminar, participants seek deeper understanding of complex ideas through rigorously thoughtful dialogue. A Socratic Seminar fosters active learning as participants explore and evaluate the ideas, issues, and values in a particular text. The skills that students develop through participation in Socratic Seminars are crucial for college success. |
|
Apply critical reading and thinking strategies, determine importance of information and its relevance to essential question, separate information and ideas into component parts, make inferences, identify trends, interpret data, separate information and ideas into component parts, exercise flexibility in information seeking and collaboration with peers. |
|
|
Brainstorm options, identify problems, form focus, pose questions, frame ideas, connect new ideas with prior knowledge, construct a plan to accomplish the task, establish a purpose for reading. |
|
|
Apply metacognitive strategies to assess the research process and one's own thinking. |
|
| Communicating / Presenting / Sharing | Determine the best method to communicate the resolution, convey new knowledge using effective communication skills, engage audience in discussion and respond to feedback |
| Synthesizing / Solving | Synthesizing by fusing, reordering, recalling, retelling to create new meaning or understanding, draw conclusions to create new meaning based on sound ...reasoning and authenticity of information, apply new understanding to solve the task. |
