Opportunity To Respond

All Speaking

Kagan Activities

Structured Discussion

Pyramid Discussion-

Basic Structure: Students begin in pairs, responding to a discussion question only with a single partner. After each person has had a chance to share their ideas, the pair joins another pair, creating a group of four. Pairs share their ideas with the pair they just joined. Next, groups of four join together to form groups of eight, and so on, until the whole class is joined up in one large discussion.

Variations: This structure could simply be used to share ideas on a topic, or students could be required to reach consensus every time they join up with a new group.

Concentric Circles- a.k.a speed dating

Basic Structure: Students form two circles, one inside circle and one outside circle. Each student on the inside is paired with a student on the outside; they face each other. The teacher poses a question to the whole group and pairs discuss their responses with each other. Then the teacher signals students to rotate: Students on the outside circle move one space to the right so they are standing in front of a new person (or sitting, as they are in the video). Now the teacher poses a new question, and the process is repeated.

Variations: Instead of two circles, students could also form two straight lines facing one another. Instead of “rotating” to switch partners, one line just slides over one spot, and the leftover person on the end comes around to the beginning of the line. Some teachers use this strategy to have students teach one piece of content to their fellow students, making it less of a discussion strategy and more of a peer teaching format. In fact, many of these protocols could be used for peer teaching as well.

Affinity Mapping-

Basic Structure: Give students a broad question or problem that is likely to result in lots of different ideas, such as “What were the impacts of the Great Depresssion?” or “What literary works should every person read?” Have students generate responses by writing ideas on post-it notes (one idea per note) and placing them in no particular arrangement on a wall, whiteboard, or chart paper. Once lots of ideas have been generated, have students begin grouping them into similar categories, then label the categories and discuss why the ideas fit within them, how the categories relate to one another, and so on.

Variations: Some teachers have students do much of this exercise—recording their ideas and arranging them into categories—without talking at first. In other variations, participants are asked to re-combine the ideas into new, different categories after the first round of organization occurs. Often, this activity serves as a good pre-writing exercise, after which students will write some kind of analysis or position paper.

Hexagonal Thinking

All Writing

Kagan Activities

EdTech for All Writing

• whiteboard.fi

• wakelet

• socrative

• Peardeck and Nearpod

Structured Summarizing

3-2-1

List: 3 main points (or 3 “somethings”), 2 controversial ideas (or two things I disagree with), and 1 question related to the key concept or learning

The Most Important Thing

Three important ideas/things from the lesson today are ---, ---, and ---, but the most important thing I learned today is ---.

Acrostics

Give students a key word/concept from the lesson. They must then write a detail or descriptor that starts with each of the letters of the key word/concept

2$ Summaries

With each word worth 10 cents, write a $2 summary of the learning from the lesson. This can be scaffolded by giving students specific words related to the learning that they must include in their summaries. This can be increased to any amount of money.

"Aha!" & "Huh?"

Write down 1 or 2 “ahas” (something you learned) and 1 or 2 “huhs” (things you still have questions about)

Six Word Memoirs

In 6 words, what did you learn? (This is a variation of the Smith Magazine writing contest) For samples, see: http://sixwordmemoirs.aarpmagazine.org/

Click here for more summarizing strategies

Written Conversation

Each student begins the answer to a question or prompt posed by the teacher. Then after 1 or 2 minutes of writing, they exchange their papers (or pass them around). Then they spend 1-2 minutes responding to the writing/thinking on the paper they receive. Then they pass the paper the paper back (or on) and continue the process. Limit the time, using a timer or other signal, so that students are always left thinking they have more to say.

Changing Points of View

Ask students to do a quick-write about a topic related to the learning from lesson from a very specific point of view. (i.e., What would X say about --?)

Check out your tools book from your Banter2 bag.

All Doing

Kagan Activities

Memory Box