"Do Tomorrow" Active Student Response Resources

Students use agreed upon hand signals to non-verbally engage in and add to discussions.

Students show a card to demonstrate their answer or engage in a discussion non-verbally. For example, cards could include red for disagree, green for agree, or yellow for not sure, or they could include multiple choice answers like a, b, c, or d.

As students read, they complete teacher-prepared notes that align with the reading selection. The notes could include key questions, prompts to reflect, or specific spaces to write key facts or concepts from the reading.

As students read, they make annotations, or notes within the text, to respond to what they are reading. This could include underlining key details, circling words they don’t understand, or marking questions they have about what they are reading.

Graphic organizers are visual note-taking templates that depict the relationship between facts, patterns, or ideas. These can be used by students throughout a lesson to take notes, connect ideas or concepts, and visually represent what they are thinking.

Using a white board (or paper in a plastic sleeve) and a dry-erase marker, students write their responses to questions. They then show their responses to the teacher for immediate feedback.

The teacher calls on students at random to answer a question or explain their thinking. It can be helpful to let students know that you will be cold-calling students ahead of time to give them time to prepare or to plan cold calling for questions with no right or wrong answer.

Teachers do not take “I don’t know” as an answer. When students are unwilling or unable to answer, teachers strive to make the questioning sequence end with the student providing the correct answer. This can be done in a few ways: 1) the teacher or another student provides the answer; the student repeats it or 2) the teacher or another student provides a cue or clue to help the student find the answer.