Making Content Accessible to All Students Linda Mehlbrech February 19, 2009

Agenda Share ideas from last session Before Reading Strategies Vocabulary Development The Content Pass Wordstorming The Babe and I

During Reading Strategies Expert Groups Read, Reread and Reexamine

After Reading Strategies Exit Slips Life is Like a Rock Group

Content Pass A Content Pass helps the students build background knowledge prior to beginning a new unit. By the end of this activity students have encounters a topic from a variety of text types and from a variety of points of view in a short period of time.

They have gathered many facts, and from those facts arise the questions that guide their reading and inquiry.

Wordstorming Wordstorming to anticipate content is an organizer that allow the reader to assess and build content knowledge prior to beginning a topic or unit of study. Read through an article and select 3- 5 letters of the alphabet that start key words or concepts Provide students with the organizer.

Instruct students to predict words beginning with the letters you have given. Record their predictions on a group organizer. Leave the predictions on the screen as you read the article. Revisit the predictions and if important points were missed, summarize the points.

Expert Groups Chose a topic, unit of study, text or essential question and provide the students with a list of topics. Post the list a week before beginning the unit and allow the students to sign up to become experts. When you come to an item in your study ask ” Who is our expert on _____?”

The student who has the chosen topic takes about two minutes to give the class information. Use 4X6 inch index cards. The students can list information, make key points, cite sources or quotes and even an illustration. You can create and Expert Wall with the cards when they are complete.

Think, Rethink, Reread and Reexamine This tool lends structure to small groups discussion. It helps students record their initial response after a reading. They discuss their responses with others and then reread the text and reexamine their the thinking.

Life is Like a Rock Group If you gave a problem to 5 different rock groups they’d each come up with a different song. Break into 5 groups and take on a name. Do research about the problem. The present your side of story.

What do you think about the government’s response to the Great Depression?

Exit Slips Exit Slips are effective tools for assessing what students have learned a the end of class or at the end of a lesson. Use them when students have encountered new content, learned a new reading or writing strategy or had difficulty with the content.

Contact Information Linda Mehlbrech Long Beach Unified School District