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Saturday, October 12, 2019

Three Sentence True/False

Here is a great no-prep, post-reading activity which I got from Cindy Hitz's blog - if you are not reading her blog, it is a treasure trove of great CI insights and activities! I have been devouring it and have found so many practical CI application there. 

The activity is very simple - two true sentences and one false sentence from a reading. Here is a link to her directions for this activity.

Observations
  1. This truly is a no-prep activity - the only material which you need is a passage/reading which you have been reviewing.
  2. I gave 45 seconds for each group to find the false sentence. This gave students a sense of urgency (which was not necessary since most found the false sentence in about 20 seconds) but also kept the activity moving along.
  3. I divided the reading into three sections - students had to pick one sentence from each section. I did this so that students had to use the entire passage instead of just writing down the first three sentences of the passage. This also made students look through/be familiar with the entire passage in determining the false sentence.
  4. Although I partnered students, I had a few smaller classes which would have resulted in lesser rotations of sentences and would have made the activity end much more quickly. To remedy this, I myself added 3-4 lists of true/false sentences and lettered them. For these classes, I kept the lists of sentences, and one group would pass its sentences to me, and in turn, I would pass one of mine to the next group. It is important, however, that you keep track of the order of your own sentences so you know which sentences to pass on next.
  5. Due to having an odd number of students in a few of my classes, I did have groups of three. I found that this was too big - pair works better if possible.
  6. This does get in lots of repetitions of sentences. As students got more exposure to the true/false sentences, it became very obvious to them which sentences were false.
  7. I liked that this activity involved close reading, because many students wrote some subtle changes for their false sentences. 
  8. I loved that all I had to do was facilitate this activity. This gave me an opportunity to walk around to see how students were doing.
So if you need a break from "being on" in the classroom or suddenly are in need of an activity at the last minute, consider this one! As always, thanks, Cindy!

1 comment:

  1. this was great! i used a short story to keep it simple for level 1. we had trouble passing papers, so we walked around the classroom and read. it was great to hear and see the students engaged with so much text at all ends of the task! the toughest part was reading each others' handwriting!

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