First Type of Student Response: Repeat

This week I started my full pull-out schedule. It was great to meet all my kiddos! I definitely have some fun characters in this bunch. What I find to be the most challenging so far is switching gears for each grade level. At one point during each day I am going from Kindergarten then to Fifth Grade. As you may know, those two grade levels are quite different! At least it keeps things interesting and is stretching me to be flexible!

This week I introduced the first of three structured student responses. During group time, we practice listening and speaking A LOT. We then practice writing down our ideas, reading and re-reading our own writing, and reading the writing of others. We talk a lot about what a good speaker sounds like and what a good listener looks like. To encourage students to listen to each other I devised three simple structured student responses. I originally saw these being used by my friend, Katie Evans, when she was teaching Kindergarten. I tweaked them a bit for my own uses and so far they have worked wonderfully! I will also be linking the posters to go with the responses. Here is the first one:

Repeat - Say what I say.

Hold up pointer finger to repeat. 
Students will repeat what they heard. It could be a word, a sentence, or an idea. This helps to practice listening for details and then using language to share what you heard. This is the most basic form of response, just a copy of what was heard. It is a great place to start. When the speaker is finished sharing, they will pick a friend to "REPEAT." The speaker continues to pick friends to "REPEAT." When everyone has had a turn, the speaker's turn is over and they pick a new friend to be the speaker. It was great to hear Kindergarteners repeat details from their friend's writing. The 3rd graders loved to be the one in charge of picking students to "REPEAT." They ran the discussion and you could tell that they were looking for friends who were really paying attention. This is my very first upload to Teachers Pay Teachers! Check it out here or click the title for the Google Doc.

I will be introducing the next structured student response next week: Connect. Stay tuned here and at Teachers Pay Teachers for more!