Team Windows - teacher break

I needed a break today. I shouldn't have, because I wasn't at school yesterday, but for whatever reason, teaching the day after you've been out is just enervating, so instead my kids provided comprehensible input to themselves. 

I wrote fourteen questions on a topic we've been discussing. They're fairly open-ended questions in the sense that the kids can give their own answer, but they're not so open-ended that the ones who still need a lot of structure are at a loss. (how much money do you have in your pocket? what grocery store do you prefer to visit? at the grocery store, what are you looking for? what food is cheaper at kroger than at publix?) They've also got an entire group to work with.

Kids sit in groups of four in a circle. Each group has ONE form for the whole group that looks like this:

A _____name____________	B_______name__________
C_______name__________	D_______name__________

The kid who has been assigned A picks a question off the list and asks B the question. B answers in a complete sentence. A writes down the answer in B's box. (i usually don't have them write out the question - they write the number of the question next to the answer) Then A turns to C, who says "I agree; complete sentence" or "I disagree; complete sentence." A records this answer.

Now B is the writer. B will ask C a new question, and D and A will agree or disagree and B will record this information. It keeps going around the circle in this way until they run out of questions or you stop them.

You can then take these answers and put them into a powerpoint and do a large-group questioning session the next day if you want.

You could easily do this with a story they've been reading (comprehension questions), and I frequently do. You can also ask them perspective questions. When my fours read plays last year, I assigned each of them a character, and they had to answer the questions from that character's perspective rather than their own personal one.