Say Something!
Feb. 21, 2012: With the support of one of my Learning Classroom colleagues, I have attempted yet another new teaching strategy. I tried using the "Say Something" reading comprehension prompts with my grade 9 applied class last week. I was hesitant to try this strategy because it seemed difficult to grasp and as I have only seen it in action and never tried it myself it seemed even more daunting. I figured that this is the year to try everything and anything new. This seemed to fall in line with their learning styles (bodily Kinesthetic - manipulating the reading with underlining and interpersonal - with the discussion). The way that this process works (as far as I have grasped it to date) is that the students are given a piece of text to read and as they are reading they are commenting, questioning, predicting, clarifying and making connections to the text. As they read the piece, they have coloured pencils to underline with that correspond to the various "Say Something" prompts. The students then, write their comment, question, etc. in the margins of the paper to use in discussion and understanding later on. After reading, the students then get into small groups to discuss their questions, comments, etc. and try to come to an understanding of the material read together by supporting one another through the process. This particular group of students, bought into the whole underlining and the prompts, but the discussions were less than I had expected. I think that I will try this strategy again with a "lighter" piece of text to help them feel more confident in their discussion portion of the process as the content of this text was perhaps too challenging to start with. Overall, I was impressed with their understanding and I have attached some pictures here of the prompts and a sample of the work. I appreciated the support from my colleague on this and would love for those of you who have tried this strategy to share your successes or failures here so that all of us can support each other.