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Tuesday, February 1, 2011

It ain't over til It's over - Activating Prior Knowledge - Part 3 After Reading

yogi!photo © 2008 Chris connelly | more info (via: Wylio) 


“It ain’t over til it’s over” was the phrase coined by Yogi BerraSpoken like a true sportsman or classroom teacher!  

We all know that even when the kids have finished reading a story they’re “not really done”.  We read. We discuss. We assess.  There are all kinds of other activities that we can initiate to make sure the students have made connections to their reading.  This is Part 3 in the "Activating Prior Knowledge" series. 

In the Before reading post, it was suggested to use an Anticipation Guide.  If used, it would be a great (quick) assessment to see if the kids can answer those questions correctly now.  (They love getting them all right too!!).  Also, in the Before post as an alternative to the KWL chart - a Word Cloud was suggested.  How about make a new word cloud to share what was learned.  (The kids love comparing them!) 

The During reading post suggested to use a Wallwisher.  Students could add new thoughts to the Wallwisher.  (The kids will have fun revisiting the Wall!).


Other activities  to institute when the students have finished reading could include creating a retelling of the story.  Why not try have the students create a comic at ToonDoo.  It is free, fun and quite simple to use.  See my sample below.

Marven

Another activity along the lines of a summary, is to create a talking picture at Blabberize.  Blabberize is a free site where you can upload a picture and record a narration.  In the sample below, a picture was created at Sketchfu then uploaded to make a Blabber. 






For something a little more open-ended, have students create a poem.  With the help of ReadWriteThink students are guided through the writing process.  See the sample below of an Acrostic poem. 



Guiding our students and having them complete activities AFTER reading will help them make connections and therefore, have a deeper understanding of the concepts.  

Hopefully, students will come to the realization themselves that "It ain't over till it's over!"

2 comments:

  1. You could have the students write about what they have read in just one sentence, with only seven words. A way to focus on what was most important for them during the readingexperience.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nancy, I like how you had so many examples of such a variety of ways to respond to the book. It will be a perfect thing to show students. Look at the variety of products you can do to "finish" the book, as it were. It's valuable to have teachers do the work and show students what is expected. Brava!

    ReplyDelete

I welcome your comments and ideas!!


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