Give One Get One - Reading Comprehension

The strategy of Give One, Get One allows teachers to encourage student engagement and collaboration without allocating a tremendous amount of class time.  Students list items relating to the content and will share with classmates.  Each student shares, and then writes down what is shared.  Students circle the room and collect as much information as they can. 

I've used it on several occasions to review important elements of a lesson but I wanted to give it a little twist.  The most recent application of the Give One, Get One strategy required students to actively read an article, summarize the author's key ideas in bullet point format, and then participate in Give One, Get One.  By sharing the key points of the article, students developed a more in depth comprehension of the article's content.

Immediately following the G1G1, students participated in a class discussion and improved comprehension was clearly evident.

Today's Meet

Donegal teachers were introduced to TodaysMeet during during an IU13 training in-service day a few years ago.  The fundamental purpose of TodaysMeet is to serve as a backchannel to connect a speaker/presenter directly to the audience in a secure, non-public environment.  It seems like a pretty legit tool for a classroom teacher - what a great way to extend thinking by allowing students to respond to classmates' statements in a safe environment that's function parallels Twitter's platform. 

A self-debate began, as I wondered if it would be effective in the classroom to enhance instruction by creating opportunity for collaboration between students and teachers, or if it would backfire a allow students to distract from the learning of classmates.  The potential for usage problems exist, but with effective classroom management and well-established classroom expectations, students will use the tool as it is intended. 

This past week, I used TodaysMeet as an accompaniment to other active reading strategies.  Students were directed to post questions, comments, interesting ideas, and highlights to the TodaysMeet Room as they completed a supplementary reading assignment to the room.  They were encouraged to extend thinking by responding to other student's ideas as they finished. 

The final component of the lesson, had students respond to the essential question using the backchannel.  A student could gauge the responses of his/her classmates and formulate a better/more complete answer to the question.