Carrousel Carrousel is an active, interactive summarizing activity in which learners share something they have learned and listen to and analyze what others have learned about a topic. Target Learning Strategies: summarizing, listening, presenting, analyzing Lesson Stages: Beyond: After reading (or writing, or as a theme-concluding activity) Language Levels: All Procedure (for Carrousel as a summarizing activity for a theme): Compose about 8 summarizing questions for a theme you are completing. Write each on a piece of paper and post on the wall of the classroom or the hallway. Divide learners into 8 groups. Teach the roles for various group members and language they will need, e.g., Writer: Writes down what group members say; asks questions to clarify. Do you mean...?” Leader: Initiates discussion of each question, leading the group to analyze what has been written and asking for new ideas. What can we add to the comments here? Reader: Reads what has already been written on each new question; reads and summarizes information on the last question visited for the group. Almost everyone agreed that .... Includer: Makes sure that everyone contributes to the discussion. Tara, what do you think? Groups assign roles. Each group stands next to one question posted on the wall. Groups take a few minutes to read, discuss, and write answers to the first question. The teacher gives a signal, and groups rotate clockwise to the next question. There they read what has already been written, discuss what they have to add or comment on, and write it down. Groups continue until they get to the last question. There, all the other members sit down, and the readers stay to share with the class what answers have been written to their last question. Class and teacher can summarize and clarify answers as needed. Example: Have learners present narratives they developed from the point of view as one of the family members in the personal narrative, “Are We Having Fun Yet,” by Ryan Levy. 4 CREATING IMAGERY Proficient readers create mental images as they process a text. They engage with the text and envision or respond to what they read by visualizing it. Creating this visual imagery requires interaction with the text and deep and careful mental processing. This results in better recall and comprehension of the reading material (Buehl, 2008; Gambrell, Kapinus, & Wilson 1987).
2013). As students mingle and move around, they ask and answer questions and compare their responses about a topic. Eventually, they find their position according to some criterion that can be ordered. The line-up can be used as a quick warm up, a review of a topic, for dividing students into pair or groups by matching those standing next to each other or those standing at the end of the line etc. Target Learning Strategies: cooperative learning, comprehension, fluency, critical thinking Lesson Stages: Into, Through, Beyond Language Levels: All Procedure: Ask a question that results in answers that can be ordered, for example, What time do you get to school in the morning? How far do you travel to school? What is the month and day of your birthday? What is your favorite number? Model asking and answering the question so that everyone has the language they need. Ask students to interact with one another, sharing information about the question in order to identify their place in line, for example, the earliest to the latest morning risers. Students line up in the correct order. Ask students to share their responses with the whole class (for example, I got up at 6:25 this morning) to check if they have positioned themselves correctly in the line. Conclude the activity, or... “Fold” the line in half to create partners for the next activity. Example: A variation of the activity can be used when teaching the poem, “Fears and Loves” by Sharon Creech. Students write down their own fears and loves and/or fears and loves from the poem. Each fear/love is put on a card. Pass out the cards (do fears and loves separately), and ask students to try to line up from smallest fear to greatest fear. This should lead to discussion about how a fear/love may be greater for one person than another. 7 MAKING INFERENCES Proficient readers are able to actively interact with a text, link their own knowledge and experience with information in the text, and make inferences about possible implied messages in the text (Gallagher, 2004). “Reading between the lines” means learners can infer ideas about characters, places, writer’s views, etc. This graphic organizer scaffolds inference-making and allows learners to identify meanings that are perhaps implied but not stated in the text. Target Learning Strategies: deduction, elaboration, making inferences Lesson Stage: Beyond Language Levels: Low-Intermediate to Advanced