D51: Tools, Structures, & Strategies
Key:
Knowing your Learner=K
Classroom Management=C
Structures/Protocols=S
Before Reading=B
ideas are alphabetized
5 Star Quote:
D/A
While reading a text of any length, students
choose a “5 star quote:” one that jumped off
the page for personal reasons, one that
epitomizes the book, one that captures the
essence of the writer’s voice, etc. This is
used to begin a small or large group
discussion, free write, etc.
Annotating a Text:
D/A
Using any one of the acronyms provided or
a chosen focus, students annotate the text
as a preparation for dialogue with other
students in small, then large groups.
Grouping=G
Reflection=R
Talk=T
During Reading=D
After Reading=D
Annolighting A Text
D/A
This active reading strategy links concept of
highlighting key words and phrases in a test
and annotating those highlights with
marginal notes.
Printable Student Copy
Daily Log:
C/R
This sheet helps students record/reflect
what happened in class, what they need to
do for homework, what standards and
content they learned from that day’s lesson.
Printable Directions
Author’s Circle: (Harste, Short, and
Burke, 1988)
T
Students read their pieces of writing aloud
to the other authors in the circle, which
could mean the whole class or a group of
3-4 students. Listeners respond aloud by
discussing what they hear in the writing,
with special attention to what they find
effective. They can also comment on the
meaning of the piece and raise questions
about parts where they feel the text is
unclear or needs more explanation. The
writer may revise and return to the circle
several times before submitting a final
draft.
Collaborative Annotation:
D/A/T
After students complete their own
annotation of a text, in groups of 3-5,
students pass their annotated copy to the
person on the right. Each person then
focuses, and makes additions to the
original reader’s commentary. The next
time the paper passes the new reader adds
commentary to both of the previous
work. Thus, each person in the group has
2-4 people build and expand on his/her
work.
Printable Directions
Dense Questions:
D/A
The dense questioning strategy can be
used to help students pose increasingly
dense questions as they make text-to-text,
text-to-self, text-to-world connections.
Printable Student Copy
Printable Directions
Clock Buddies
S
This structure allows for forming
partnerships with establishing multiple
partnerships to use over the long term.
Student are given a graphic with slots for
five to twelve “appointments.” When a
pair of students sign up with each other,
they must each write down the other’s
name in that same time slot so they have
a clock partner with which to work.
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Anticipation Guide:
B/T
A pre-reading activity that provides
students with a series of statements with
which they can choose to agree or
disagree; they focus on the big ideas or
themes of a text.
Blank Template
Printable Directions
Checking out the Framework:
B
This strategy provides students with
suggestions for previewing texts of
different genre in order to read
strategically based on their purposes for
reading the text.
Printable Directions
Conversations Across Time:
B/D/A
This reading strategy helps students to
develop deeper insights by making
connections between and across texts
from different time periods in response to
a common topic, theme, or essential
question.
Printable Directions
Exhibitions:
T
Exhibitions are presentations that can be
done by individuals, partners, and/or small
groups. They are generally presentations
that are broader in scope; a student
demonstrates his/her overall understanding
of the unit’s enduring understandings and
essential questions.
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© 2001 Mesa County Valley School District
Frame of Reference:
B/D/A
The frame of reference strategy teachers
students how to create a mental context
for reading a passage; this is
accomplished by helping students to
consider what they know about a topic and
how they know what they know.
Printable Student Copy
Printable Directions
Gots & Wants:
S/T
This structure allow for organizing and
integrating information. This active
learning structure provides opportunities
for students to synthesize their learning or
ask questions about a unit of study.
Printable Directions
Inquiry Board:
S
Create a space somewhere in your
classroom where students can post
unanswered questions that come up. They
may be in response to a variety of topics,
texts, writers, etc. A student can grab a
question and research and answer it to
stimulate a piece of writing or discussion.
Key Concept Synthesis:
B/D/A
The key concept synthesis helps students
to identify the joist important ideas in a
text, put those ideas into their own words,
and then make connections between and
among these important ideas.
Printable Directions
Literature Circles:
A/T
“Literature Circles are small, peer-led
discussion groups whose members have
chosen to read the same poem, essay,
short story, article, or book” (Daniels,
2002). Literature circles promote dialogic
interaction among students and empower
to take an active and self-directed role in
their reading.
Printable Directions
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Focused Free Writing:
B/T
(Porter, 2002)
Focused free writing works the same way
as free writing except that students start
with a specific topic. While writing, they
may digress and interrupt their writing, but
eventually, they should attempt to return to
the topic. Focused free writes should be
brief (five to ten minutes) and can serve as
a great warm-up to small-group or class
discussion.
Individual / Partner/Small Group
Seminars:
T
These seminars are more formal and
focused than large group seminars. A text
or portion of a text is chosen and the
student(s) analyze the text based on the
models and guided practice from
class. The students then create a thesis
that needs to be supported evidence from
the text and sets the seminar up in an
outline form. Partners and group members
discuss the texts, but each of the
individuals is responsible for submitting and
presenting their poem or section of a
novel.
Interactive Notebook:
B/D/A
A notebook where each pair of facing
pages is set up so that one page is the
class notes on content, process, activities,
etc, and the facing page is to be used for
the student’s individual interaction with the
learning experience (e.g., drawings, words,
mind maps, responses, reactions. etc.).
Printable Directions
Learning Log:
R
As a daily metacognitive tool, learning logs
can take many forms; but generally
students recount what they have learned
in the areas of both content and process;
a daily log of what was learned.
Give One to Get One:
C/S/T
This active learning structure provides an
opportunity for students to move through
the classroom developing personal
relationships with others in the room to
build the community of learners.
Printable Student Copy
Matchbook Definitions:
S/T
This structure allows for organizing and
integrating information after a topic
introduction. Students will craft a
“matchbook” definition. Works well for
learning and/or practicing summarizing.
Printable Directions
Metaphor Analysis:
D/A
This adaptable strategy teachers students
how to analyze a complex metaphor and
substantiate interpretive claims using
textual evidence.
Printable Directions
Printable Directions
Inferential Reading:
D/A
The inferential reading strategy provides a
list of the various types of inferences that
readers make while reading and even
seemingly straightforward text, recognizing
that there are different types of inferences
helps students to analyze text more
consciously and strategically.
Printable Directions
Jigsaw:
S
Students are assigned to groups to discuss
and become experts on a topic; then the
groups are "jigsawed" so that each newly
configured group has one expert from each
of the base groups
Modified Jigsaw—Printable Directions
Listening to Voice:
D/A
This strategy helps students to analyze
and interpret writer’s voice through the
annotation of a passage, with particular
emphasis on dictions, tone, syntax, unity,
coherence, and audience.
Printable Directions
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© 2001 Mesa County Valley School District
Most Important Point (MIP):
S/R
This structure provides for organizing,
integrating, and reflecting upon something
read, written, or dialogued. This is an
excellent structure to have students
practice summarizing.
Printable Directions
QAR: Question-Answer Relationships:
B/D/A
The QAR strategy helps students to
identify the four Question-Answer
Relationships that they are likely to
encounter as they read texts and attempt
to answer questions about what they have
read. These include “right there”
questions, “think and search” questions,
“author and you” questions, and “on my
own” questions.
Printable Student Handout
Printable Directions
Readers' Bookmarks:
A
These are small slips of blank paper that
can be tucked into a book and used for
writing responses to literature. Information
on the bookmarks can include what is
important, favorite part, personal
connections, questions posed, predictions
made, etc.
Reflections of the Week:
R
This structure allows for students to reflect
upon their week’s learning.
Printable Student Copy
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The Most Important Word:
S
(Padak, 1992)
“Readers select what they believe to be
the most important word in the text they
have read. Readers must be able to
explain the reasons why they think this
particular word is the most
important. Students then meet in groups
to share their answers. After each
member has shared, some students may
want to change their choice. Groups may
discuss until they reach consensus. (word
in stanza, etc.)
Poetry as an Entry Point:
B
Instead of jumping into a major text, using
thematically-linked poems to introduce the
themes or essential questions is a
powerful and compact start. To promote
the synthesis of ideas, students can then
make connections between the poem and
other thematically related texts.
Questions Only:
D
The questions only strategy teaches
students to pose questions about the texts
they are reading and encourages them to
read actively as they work to answer the
questions they have posed.
RAFT: Role, Audience, Format, Topic
A
This is a flexible post-reading strategy that
helps students to analyze and reflect upon
their reading through persona writing.
Based on suggestions provided by the
teacher or generated by the class,
students choose a Role, an Audience, a
Format, and a Topic on which to write in
response to their reading.
Printable Directions
Reciprocal Reading:
S/D
Students take turns reading aloud to each
other, stopping at several points to ask
questions, clarify, make predictions,
discuss writer’s craft, etc.
Sociograms:
S/B/A
Students create a visual representation of
the relationships among character. The
central character in a work is placed at the
center of a page and all the other
characters are placed around him/her;
spatial relationships, size, shape, color,
etc. are all used to represent their
relationship to one another.
Printable Exemplar
Printable Directions
Reciprocal Teaching:
S
Students use four comprehension
strategies—predicting, question generating,
clarifying, and summarizing to help their
peers construct meaning from the text.
Printable Directions
Socratic Seminars:
T/B/D/A
These whole class dialogues explore ideas,
values, and issues drawn from readings or
works of are chosen for their
richness. Leaders help participants to
make sense of a text and of their own
thinking by asking questions about
reasoning, evidence, connections,
examples and other aspects of sound
thinking. A good seminar is more devoted
to making meaning that to mastering
information. Participants are actively
engaged in rigorous critical thought. They
must involve a relatively short text, piece of
art, etc. and after the seminar are often
followed by periods of reflection that may
be written or spoken.
Printable Directions
BTK Curriculum Team Page 3 of 4
© 2001 Mesa County Valley School District
Stir the Class:
S/K/T
This active structure provides the teacher
with pre-assessment data and students’
prior knowledge. The teacher can also
determine students’ oral fluency while
finding out your students’ expertise and
interests. Have students write, as directed,
three reasons, three causes, three points of
interest, etc. about the topic(s) to be
studied. Ask them to make the third be
completely unique to themselves. When
prompted, students move around the room
sharing/giving ideas to each other. Once
directed, students return to their seats and
have students compare, prioritize,
categorize, design projects. Etc. based
upon the goal of the unit/teacher.
Taxonomy:
These pages clarify the classification of
levels of intellectual behavior important in
learning.
Bloom’s Taxonomy
William’s Taxonomy
Transactional Reading Journal:
R
A powerful way to engage students in a
reading experience and get them to
construct their own meaning. A set number
of required entries are to be completed that
respond to the beginning, middle, and end
of the text. The teacher and/or students
can generate options such as: any element
of writer’s craft, personal connections, a
letter to the author, character, another
literary character, a piece of art the work
Printable Student Copy inspires, etc.
Walk About:
S/T
The Writer’s Antithesis:
D/A
This active learning structure can function
Students take a passage from the text
in three ways: to introduce complex texts,
they are reading and rewrite the passage
provocative ideas/discrepancies; to
reversing one or more of the writer’s
emphasize key ideas of content material;
choices: the tone, characterization, writer’s
to raise curiosity and increase speculation
voice, point of view, setting, etc.
about a subject. The teacher creates 4-5
posters/charts/stations that incorporate
content material in pictures or words.
Group students appropriately and have
students spend 2-5 minutes per poster et.
al. Rotate the groups until all students
have been to all posters et. al. Have
students dialogue about their learning.
Printable Student Copy
Three Column Chart:
K/B/D/A
This activity is very similar to the KWL. The
teacher choses which three columns he
wants the student to complete which could
include: access prior knowledge, identify
areas of interest or concern, check for
understanding, and monitor student
progress.
Thoughts for Thinkers:
S/T
Aphoristic quotes taken from larger works
and used to start or stimulate a discussion
or as the topic for a focused free write. As
great strategy to begin or end a class
discussion.
Voice Lessons:
B/D/A
(Dean, 1999)
Using the model set up by Nancy Dean in
her book, Voice Lessons, select passages
from the text being read and use them to
showcase elements of writer's craft (e.g.,
use the selection to conduct a mini-lesson
on diction, tone, syntax, etc.).
Written Conversations:
T/D/A
(Harste, Short, and Burke 1988)
Partners using this strategy “talk” about
literature by carrying on a conversation
with each other in writing. After reading a
portion of the text, readers address their
response to their partner. The two then
exchange their notes and respond to each
other’s writing. They should try to make
meaning of the piece through questions,
comments, discussions of likes, dislikes,
personal connections, etc. The written
conversations can serve as an excellent
precursor to paired, small-group, and
class discussion.
some elements were adapted from http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/academics.cfm
some elements were adapted from Just Ask Publications
some elements were written by D51 Office of Instructional Support
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BTK Curriculum Team Page 4 of 4
© 2001 Mesa County Valley School District