Today I used an idea that I found on the Sputnik mailing list. We are beginning to study Ants. This is great fun as there are a number of ant colonies around the school. I have been able to take the pupils outside of the classroom to investigate. We have collected them with pooters and had a closer look at them with magnifying glasses. One boy got a few ants from different colonies and they attacked each other, all good fun.
Anyway, to literacy. I found a short article about ants, that is intended for use when teaching english as a foreign language. It has a lot of facts and information in it. Another useful feature of it is that each paragraph is numbered. That will be important later.
Each pupil was given a copy of the text and a pen. I then asked them to go through the text and underline any facts that:
- Interested them.
- They thought I might ask them in a test.
I was astonished at how well they took to this task. Each of them worked quietly and on their own. There was some “what are you putting down?…oh, I hadn’t thought of that” chatter, but nothing disruptive. I had boys who normally tear around the class farting at the girls and hitting the other boys in a painful area hunched over some pretty dense text, focusing on it and being interested in it.
Then, I issued each pupil with 7 post it notes, one for each paragraph of the text, and asked them to write down what they thought was the most interesting fact in each paragraph. And once again, they went back over the whole text and deliberated about what was the most interesting fact. I was astonished.
Then, on the smart board, we grouped the classes ideas for each paragraph (they very much enjoy sticking their post its to the smart board) then we gathered round and talked about it. The level of recall from this exercise was staggering. They remembered a huge number of facts.
Post it note responses
Now I have collated their responses and we are going to investigate further what the class thought the most interesting fact from each paragraph was.
