Week 17: Sentence Wall and Cognitive Strategy Snowballs

Sentence Wall

On February 19th, I attended an all-day professional development workshop at Cal State San Marcos, as part of an on-going grant that Fallbrook High School is involved with. The second half of the day focused on grammar instruction, and as a side note to the strategies she was walking us through, the woman presenting (whose name I can't remember!) mentioned that, when she worked in high school, she had a "sentence wall" in her classroom. She explained that, while students were writing, she would walk around the room with a purple highlighter. When she saw a really well-written sentence, she would highlight it. Her students knew that if she highlighted one of their sentences, sometime during the period, they were supposed to go write the sentence and their name on a strip of paper and post it on the sentence wall. 

Her mention of the "sentence wall" was probably no more than 1 minute during her 90 minute presentation, but it stood out to me more than anything else she said that afternoon. It wasn't that the other strategies she gave us weren't good (they were actually extremely useful, and I look forward to implementing them in my classroom over the next few weeks); it's just that this was something I could do immediately, without much planning, especially since I had some unused bulletin board space in my classroom. Also, I really liked the idea of doing this with my ELD 2 kids because they work so hard to write complete sentences in English that it would be nice to do something to publicly recognize and display their hard work. 

So, at the beginning of the week, I tasked one of my TAs with cutting strips of paper, and I stole about 20 pushpins from another teacher. (I left her a note telling her I would repay her, but she emailed me to let me know I didn't need to.) I made a sign that says, "Super Sentences," and I stapled it up between 2 medium-sized bulletin boards; I labeled one of the bulletin boards for ELD 2 and the other bulletin board for English 11. When I got home that afternoon, I raided my desk for highlighters. (I didn't have any good highlighters at school, and we aren't allowed to order any supplies right now...) I found 3 green highlighters and 3 blue highlighters that were virtually brand-new, so I packed them into my school bag. I was set. 

I decided to start the strategy with ELD 2, and then I will roll it out with English 11 next week. Why? I don't know; it's just working out that way. Anyway... I told my ELD 2 students about it one day while they were working on writing their vocabulary sentences. I just explained to them that I would walk around with a highlighter, and if I saw a sentence that I really, really liked, then I would highlight it. Then, they would be responsible for writing it on a strip of paper and putting it on the wall. I demonstrated this with a sentence a student had written the day before - "At the sea, there is a considerable number of fish." ("Considerable" was the vocabulary word.) Is this sentence absolutely perfect? Not quite. It would be better if it said "in" instead of "at;" however, the student wrote it completely on his own after I explained what "considerable" meant, and he used the word perfectly. 

For the most part, the students seemed to like the idea. One student said, "Aw, Ms. Lewis, why are you doing this? Now we will feel bad if we don't write sentences you highlight." Another student, throughout class, kept asking me when he was supposed to write his sentence on the wall; I had to explain to him that I would let him know. I told them that all of their sentences were good, but the ones on the wall are just ones that I really, really like. He understood and went back to his work.

Here are a couple pictures of the bulletin boards:

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Ease of use: Since I already had the wall space, this was really easy to implement. It doesn't take very much thought or instruction to get the students used to the idea either.
Would I use this again: I am going to continue to use this throughout the year. My goal is for each of my ELD 2 kids to get a sentence up on the wall at least once (which shouldn't be difficult since I only have 13 students in that class).
Downsides: As my one student said, the students whose sentences you don't use may feel sad, that's why I'm going to make an effort to highlight a sentence by each student sometime during the remainder of the year. The woman who presented the strategy said that you could even highlight a sentence that you help a lower-level student construct as a form of scaffolding; the important thing is that each student eventually gets a sentence on the wall that has his/her name on it. Another downside... I am going to have make sure that I actually remember to keep doing this! Sometimes, that is the hardest part...
Applications: You could do a "sentence wall" in almost any subject area, especially now that with the new ELD standards, students are supposed to be getting language instruction in all subject areas. However, you could also tweak the strategy and call it a "problem wall" or "formula wall" or etc. and have students write down math problems that they were able to solve. The point is just to get good examples of student work up on the walls.
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Cognitive Strategy Snowballs

Ok... so since I used to train teachers in Advanced SDAIE, the snowball is not a new strategy for me. In fact, I used to use it All. The. Time. In fact, it used to be one of my go-to strategies. However, I realized that I have not used it at all this year, and I can't remember if I used it at all last year either. :( My poor students. 

To be honest, I didn't create this activity so that my students would get to make snowballs; I created it because I was getting bored with out reading routine. I've been having my students practice using different cognitive strategies (like making predictions, asking questions, etc.) to help them understand the texts we are reading. Sometimes, I would read out loud to them, stopping at different points in the text and asking questions that they would answer following the "think-write-pair-share" model. Other times, my students would read in groups, and at the end of a chapter, one student in the group would choose a cognitive strategy and ask a question, and everyone in the group would discuss the question and write down the answer in their notebooks. It was working well, but, as I said, I was getting bored. 

While they were reading in their groups on Wednesday, I went over to my computer and created a simple graphic organizer that looks like this:

I had the graphic organizers copied on two different colored papers - yellow and purple. On Thursday, after I read Chapter XXI of The Awakening out loud to the class, I passed out the graphic organizers, alternating between the two colors. I told them to fill out the first 2 boxes of the graphic organizer. Then, I asked them to crumple up their paper and throw it toward the front of the classroom. After everyone had thrown their papers, I told them to get up and pick up a "snowball" that was the opposite color than they had originally. They unfolded the snowballs and answered the questions. 

I didn't let them have an actual "snowball" fight this first time around, because I usually graduate them to this once I know that they aren't going to abuse the snowball fight and try to get away with throwing other items around the classroom. (I also usually play the intro to Van Halen's "Jump" while they are having their snowball fight; it is high-energy and about 30 seconds long.)

After the activity, there were exclamations from the class: "That was so fun!" "Can we do that again?" "Ms. Lewis, you're so creative!" So, again, to be clear, all I had them do was write a question, crumple up the paper, throw it at the front of the room, and then go pick up another paper. 

When 2nd period started, one of my students, who is notoriously pessimistic and sarcastic, said something along the lines of, "Can we please do something fun today?" I told him that 1st period really liked what we did, but he was still skeptical. After the activity, he said, "That was fun!" I'll admit that I did not stop myself from saying, "See? I told you so!" 

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Ease of use: The snowball strategy is really easy to implement, which is part of the reason why I used to use it all the time. I don't know why I stopped... maybe because we do so much in notebooks now, that the kids don't have papers they can easily "snowball."
Would I use this again: Yes. It's a great strategy, and, as I mentioned, the kids loved it even though I didn't let them have a real "snowball" fight.
Downsides: I actually printed 3 of those graphic organizers on each paper. We read 2 chapters, so we only did the activity twice. However, that was a good thing. If the kids had crumpled up those papers one more time, they probably would've started falling apart. It turns out you really shouldn't snowball the same paper more than twice. Also, some of the students were slightly appalled when I told them to staple the pages in their notebooks ("But... they're all crumpled up!"). I told them it was okay, but they were still annoyed by it.
Applications: What I really love about this is that I can use this same graphic organizer in a number of different ways. I can snowball it; I can have students trade with a partner; I can use it as a reading quiz; I can use it with fictional or expository texts; and the list goes on...
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