Collaborative Structures

This is an example of the "Carousel Brainstorm" AVID strategy. I used it with my 7th grade RLA class to survey their opinions on issues our text would be dealing with. As you can see in the video, I divided the class into groups based on marker colors, and gave them 3-4 minutes to record their responses at each station. The entire activity took about 15 minutes, and you can see some of our results below. You will notice that this activity required each student to think, talk, read, and speak (accountably) with each other. Many students even responded directly to others' ideas (this is a huge skill in RLA classes, and for anyone!) This is a great strategy for gauging prior knowledge, reviewing concepts prior to assessment, generating ideas and making predictions, etc.

I hope you have some ideas about how you can incorporate this strategy. It takes hardly any planning, and the results in my classroom have been impressive!