"T" = Teach What You Read

I had posted before about my new TRAVEL acronym for reading in my classroom next year. I have typed out my thoughts so far on how to use the "T" part of the acronym practically. Let me know what your thoughts are, please!

How to Implement "T" in the classroom

The "T" in TRAVEL stands for "Teach What You Read." I am really excited about this aspect of TRAVEL because it can be incorporate across the curriculum in many ways and it gets students out of passive learning mode. And, as we all know, if you can teach a concept to someone else your level of understanding that concept is pretty high. It is also a great way to assess student learning and evaluate where each student is in the learning process of a concept.

These are the ideas I have so far on how to implement "Teach What You Read" in the classroom:

1) Reading:

- After reading the story for the week from our Open Court reading books, students can take turns teaching each other about the story. They can talk about the setting, characters, plot, etc.

- There is usually a moral of the story that we always discuss as a whole group. After discussing it one day together, the next day students could pair up and re-teach each other.

- We always have 6-7 vocabulary words in our Open Court reading story. We discuss the meaning of the words on Mondays and then students could re-teach each other the vocabulary words on the other days of the week.

2) Science:

- Last year I had my students do a big research writing project on a planet of their choice. Each student checked out a book from the library on their planet and spent several days reading through their book and taking notes on the most important things. We then moved into the writing process and at the end students had a five paragraph essay complete with a little bibliography. We invited our parents to hear the papers read aloud when we were done. This was a great activity that had students take what they learned through reading and teach others about a topic. It was one of my favorite moments of the year when several students said, "I didn't realize you could actually get information on things you wanted to know about from books!" Yes, my dears, that is a huge reason why we read. :-)

    
3) History:

- We read mini-biographies on famous Americans for our history curriculum. I would love to have my students take this information and practice teaching about the person we read about to each other.

4) Book Reports:

- We have a book report due about every two weeks in 3rd grade. Students always do a little project and turn it in to me after each book report. I would love to apply the "T" to our book reports and have the students teach us about what they just read in their book report instead of just filling out a sheet and turning it in to me.

5) Differentiated Learning:

- I had one student this past year who was so far above the rest of his classmates level wise. He would finish his work very quickly and accurately and then spend his time reading or doing origami. Reading and origami are wonderful but I wanted to challenge him as well. So, I had him choose a topic of his choice, research it, and make a magazine for our class to read. He also presented his topic to the class when he was done.

- The "T" is great for those students who always finish quickly and in need of a challenge. They can choose a book and prepare a little "lesson" for the class after they read.

I think I will also love implementing the "Teach What You Read" next year, because it can be done in many ways. Students can just talk to each and teach what they just read or they can write about it or they can use graphic organizers. So many options!

What are you thoughts? What are some way you have your students teach what they read about in the classroom?


PS I have no idea why most of this is highlighted white......I don't know how to remove that and I don't know how it even happened...hmmmm... :-/