Here’s a snippet of the quality teaching that happens in our

classrooms.

Venn diagrams

Creating sentences

Questioning

What animal is this?

What does it look

like?

What words would

you use?

“I see a fat, furry

zebra.”

Can you point to ‘I’?

What letter does

‘see’ start with?

Can you find it on

the chart?

Students were Students were given pictures given pictures from the text. from the text. They use these to They use these to make predictions make predictions on what the text on what the text is going to be is going to be about.about.

Each student chose a character and they wrote a speech or thought bubble for that character. They justified their answers.

For each incident that occurred in the book students had to think about how the character was feeling. They looked at the pictures in the book and used their own knowledge of the incidences to come up with them.

Students read a book about monsters.

They then created their own monster! What does it look like? Act like? Feel like?

Who was the character who committed the crime?

What evidence do we have?

How does that link them to the crime?

There’s a class pet, a hamster. All of the students want to take it home for the holidays but you have to find the most responsible one. What questions would you ask them to work out whether they are responsible?

Before reading the text students were given an illustration from it. They discussed the illustration through the thinking routine; I see, I think, I wonder.

Individually students wrote down what they thought were the 7 main ideas from the text. Students then paired up and made their now14 strips back to7 justifying their choices.They then came together as a group and cut it down to seven again.

Students came up with their own responses to the questions:

What would you find difficult if you couldn’t smell? Taste? Touch or feel?

Remember:

-You don’t have to invent new strategies. Reuse and revamp!

-Stand on the shoulders of others (borrow others ideas, try them out yourself)