Reading Circles/ Inside out Reading

1CoolThing is all about that one simple idea that can spark an "AHA moment" and potentially transform what you do.

I had a bit of an AHA moment a couple months ago while at an NGSS training taught by Jim Clark. He's a retired science teacher that now does PD on NGSS integration.  His session was really great, but he shared with us a practice from his teaching days that I thought would be perfect for all subject areas and one that I wanted to share with our staff.

I've created a short video describing the process. Here it is:

I want to give Jim full credit for this.  He actually called it Inside out Reading.  To me, it's about going from the outside in, but I don't think "Outside in Reading" sounds very good.  So, I've just been calling it "Reading Circles."  I'm sure others have done this before and have their own name for it too.


Here's what I like about it:

• Subject agnostic: This could be used in any discipline and can focus on anything the teacher asks students to read from.

• It promotes student voice and equity. By having all students move two post its to the first ring, it ensures that all students have a voice.

• Great for differentiating.  A student with limited understanding from the reading may write lower level or basic ideas on their post its while an advanced student can write more in depth or thoughtful comments.  In either case, their contribution matters and everyone can contribute from the level they understood.  In the end, everyone arrives at the central idea. Those lower level student are more likely to get the reading after the discussion.

• This can be used as a form of "flipped" learning. Student read some new content as homework, and then come to class and have discussions about the topic. The teacher as facilitator can help ensure the main points got across to the students.

• It's manipulative: Students are speaking and using their hands to move ideas around. This increases engagement.

• The 4Cs: Promotes collaboration, critical thinking, communication, and creativity. Less of the latter, but certainly the first 3.  Especially if you have some good guiding questions for the activity.

• This could be used in jigsaw methods.  Assign multiple readings to the class. Each group has a discussion on their reading, then the class discussion focuses on pulling all of those readings together.

• Use it for movies:  Make movies shown in class less passive. Have students take notes on post it's and then carry out this activity after the film to pull out main ideas.

Here are some pictures I took from my workshop. You can see how we stuck post it's together that had similar points.

Overall, I think this is just a great tool to have in one's toolbox.  As with any practice, you don't want to use it too much, but by using it multiple times, students will get better at the process and the richness of conversations will increase too.

What ideas do you have? How could this practice be applied to your context? How could you take it one step further.

Here's Jim's contact info. Check him out:

Jim Clark

NGSS Innovations

https://nextgenscienceinnovations.wordpress.com/

BioInteractive Howard Hughes Medical Institute

@Biointeractive

@Sci_innovations