Five Fabulous Frontloading Ideas
- 1. PHAT (Practical, Helpful, After School Training) Monday
- 2. Anticipation Guides Brief sets of questions or statements At least 3-5 items Activate prior knowledge Make predictions Introduce important issues Get them thinking before reading
- 3. Anticipation Guides Students can simply circle their answers May talk briefly with a classmate or as a class Most powerful AGs are not factual recall AGs should invite students to take a stand on a controversy or big idea in the reading Making students think about key concepts before reading provides real purpose for reading
- 4. Sample AG for Fahrenheit 451 Rank each statement 1-4. 1=strongly disagree 4=strongly agree Technology makes life better. Reading for school should be optional. Freedom is more important than safety. The world is changing and we need to change with it in order to keep up. Some beliefs are worth dying for.
- 5. Written Conversation Our example: music lyrics/poetry Select 3-4 lines from the text Group students according to the # of lines Each student writes his/her line at the top of a piece of paper For 2 minutes, students respond to their lines What does the line make you think about? What do you think it means?
- 6. Written Conversation cont… After 2 minutes, have students rotate papers with those in their group Give them 2 minutes to read what is written and continue to respond to the line or partner’s comments Continue to rotate until original writer receives his/her paper back Advantage: all students are actively engaged rather than the handful that will volunteer
- 7. List-Group-Label Our example: The class or teacher develops a list of 20-25 key vocabulary words from the reading In small groups, arrange words into clusters based on something words have in common Clusters must contain at least 3 words Words can be used more than once Students should assign labels for each cluster
- 8. Article from NYT Upfront Banned Sagging Unconstitutional Illegal Clothes Schools Arrested Revealing Public Laws Underwear Trend Violated Ordinance Mainstream Freedom Fashion Obama Zac Efron Expression Government Distasteful David Beckham Opposition
- 9. Probable Passage (Current Events) From the categorized list of words, small groups work together to create a ‘gist’ statement that will summarize their reading. In addition, students create a list of questions about unknown words or ideas they hope the reading will answer. Note: It is OK if the gist statement doesn’t match the reading—it does show that their expectations and the reading differed—which is important to realize.
- 10. Think Aloud (Math) Before beginning let students know you’ll be stopping to think aloud as you read. Use short passages Provide copies for students to follow along After modeling, have students try with a partner. Tell students what to look for in your thinking aloud: Ex: Watch how I stop to decipher which information will be important in figuring out the solution and which information may be superfluous.
- 11. Think Aloud Example Suzy is ten years older than Billy, and six inches taller. Next year she will be twice as old as Billy, but likely only four inches taller if Billy continues to grow at the rate he is currently. How old are they now?
Editor's Notes
- #12: Here's an easy word problem: Suzy is ten years older than Billy, and next year she will be twice as old as Billy. How old are they now? If you don't use algebra, you probably have to solve it by trial and error. This sometimes works fine. Here it is a little slow. And, in other problems, it is next to impossible. 1. Translate into equations With algebra, the solution is easy. The only problem is to convert the above sentence into equations, because equations are what we need to use algebra. How is this? S=10+B S+1=2(B+1) That is a direct translation of the word problem. I used S to represent Suzy's age (this year), and B for Billy's age. I could use other letters, but these are easier to remember. Do you see how this translation is done? "Suzy is ten years older than Billy" is an equation (S=10+B), but is in words instead of symbols. "Next year she will be twice as old as Billy" is a little more complicated, but is just another equation (S+1=2(B+1)).