Have a Good Life

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the Plain Talk about Reading Conference in New Orleans. It was a good conference and there was a lot of good information. Here are my notes from the first session with Anita Archer called "Getting them all engaged: Inclusive, active participation". I did some recordings of it that are included with the zip file. There is a PDF that has my notes. 

Twitter version of this session: 

When we want students to discuss things, we should have sentence starters for them. We want them to discuss, not just state what the "right" answer is. They can be like this:

1. I disagree with you, I think...
2. I disagree with you, because...
3. I agree with you, but I also think...
4. I agree with you, because…

This gives kids an opportunity to discuss things, and not just give a yes or no response. It also opens the door for you to shove some academic language in there when they are discussing. 

See the PDF for the rest of the notes on this session. And, I was sitting in the front row, so I got to see Anita up close. Very close. She kept standing next to me. 

The audio recordings start at these spots in the PDF: 

1st recording: I. A. Active Participation

2nd recording: I. A. c. Gentle Redo

3rd recording: I. B. d. Give students a sentence starter

4th recording: I. C. Less Desirable Practices

5th recording: I. E. b. Why is it better to write on Slates?

6th recording: I. F. a. Why are response cards great? Limited set of responses (increases chance of success)

Have a Good Life.

P.S. For those keeping track at home, I used the app called Notability to take these notes. It is by far my favorite note taking app so far.