We have to say, that having the slightly older children in groups, sharing their knowledge with the younger children and readily accepting their ideas, at the organising stage of our inquiry, has been so, so awesome because the older children had an opportunity to lead and model the skills needed for recording on graphic organisers and the leaders role was to encourage participation from their group members. Both classes had already completed a rubric for Participating and Contributing and knew what their foci were.
Their cooperative learning within the groups, has shown us there are only a few children that have not learned this skill yet. So as the teachers we were “on the spot “ to give specific encouragement.
The question map, carefully modelled several times, encouraged the groups to ask those “useful questions “ pertaining to their product, The groups of kids gained confidence at completing their own question maps with the chosen product, and then answered their own questions. A couple of groups answered some questions with short phrases or one word, so that again led to the specific skill teaching of answering a question in a sentence, using a keyword.
Monday, September 14, 2009
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