Caroline Elizabeth Hall
KWL Chart
Once you finish your story or lesson, go back to your KWL chart and fill in the what we have learned column,
This is a great way to track student learning from the beginning of your lesson (prior knowledge) to the end of your lesson (new knowledge). Be sure to refer to your KWL chart throughout your lesson so you can make sure to answer questions in the W column - what do we want to know.
I like to put the name of the student who gave me the information beside the statement or question so that you can assess individual student's learning and keep track of what students have shared and what students haven't shared.
After Reading:
Exit Slip
Exit slips are great to use as a formative assessment at the end of the story.
To use this strategy, choose 3 questions that guide children to think deeply or reflect on the story that they read.
The responses are handwritten (which can be a great way to quickly check handwriting and sentence structure) and returned to the teacher by the student.
Questions might include:
1. Write one thing you learned about the story.
2. I didn't understand....
3. Did you enjoy the story you (or we) read? Why or why not?
Summarizing
Summarizing is a very important skill for young children to use when reading a new story or text.
Summarizing a story means that the reader takes out only the most important parts (or main ideas) of the story and writes them as a brief summary.
Make sure that your students are summarizing the text in their own words, not copying directly from the story that was read.
To make summarizing more enjoyable for children, you might ask them if they would like to also draw a picture of one of the main ideas in their summary.