Kids Teaching Kids!! An End of the Year Reading Skills Review!

Welcome to my very 1st link-up party!!!  I'm so excited to be a part of it and share my end of the year activity!!!  Thanks so much for reading!! 

At the bottom, you can see the activity, timeline and directions in a list.  :) 

So, as a way to review all of the reading skills we have learned and practiced throughout the year, I have my students become the teachers!  They pair up and pick a skill to teach.  Since we do 20 minute reading rotations all year, the kids are used to moving around a lot.  After my students pick the skill that they want to teach, they start brainstorming together how they want to review that skill with the other kids.  Many times, they used the same graphic organizers and structure as my co-teacher and I do during reading which definitely puts a smile on my face!  I got chills last year when I heard them teaching!  They sounded like us, and they knew what they were talking about!  They all pretty much made a poster to use as an anchor chart like ours in the room.  :)

Getting back to it, we do go around as they are planning to help the groups.  When we see one that needs a little more help, we will sit with them and plan it out together.  They can use books from the class library, graphic organizers, games, etc. to review the skill.  We let them plan for the first 3 days of the week during reading.  Then on the 4th-7th days (depending on how long you extend it), they teach the other kids in a rotation style just as we do in class.  We have the rotations go on for about 10 minutes so it's pretty quick and keeps them on task.  We give about a 2 minute clean up and transition time.  Half the groups go on the 4th day and half on the 5th.  They spread out around the room and set up their classroom!  Sometimes, we do have to add a day or two to finish.  It just depends on our schedule.  The kids absolutely love it!!! Take a look at the pictures from last year!!  We are just getting ready to start them this year in a couple of weeks.  It's a great way to wrap up the year in reading as well as to see how well the kids know their skills and can apply them.

The skills that they teach are:  main idea and details, cause/effect, compare/contrast, drawing conclusions, sequencing, plot, fact and opinion, theme, author's purpose, characters/setting, making connections, character traits.  We also used homophones, antonyms, and synonyms.












Activity: Kids Teaching Kids!  An End of the Year Reading Skills Review!
Duration: 1-2 weeks depending on your schedule
Directions:
1. Decide which skills you want the kids to review and teach.

2. Let kids pick partners or you can select partners (I selected them last year to allow a mix of levels in a group, but it can be done either way.)

3. Let the kids brainstorm, plan, and create how they are going to review with their classmates.  Many students make posters like my anchor charts for the skill they are teaching and then use an organizer or activity we've done throughout the year with that skill.

4. Set up a rotation and schedule for the groups to teach- if you have 45 minutes, you can have 3 or 4 rotations that day.  I have 60 minutes that I can use so I can get around 4-5 in a day.

5. Have a folder for the kids to collect their materials from the reviews.  You can use a long sheet of construction paper, fold it, and use it as a file folder.  I like using this so they can have a 2nd grade review folder. :)

6. Set a timer as they do the rotations to keep you on track.

7. I have kids sitting on the floor, in desks, at tables to teach.

8. Once finished, we reflect on how they felt as the teachers, their challenges and likes, etc.

9. This finally leads up to our "End of Year Final" covering all of the skills.  I will try to see if I can get that uploaded on here in the next couple weeks if you'd like to see it. :)

10. Finally, just enjoy watching your students!!  It's soooo rewarding to see them teach since that really shows comprehension!  It's a great way to end the year for the teacher and the students!!

If you try this, I would LOVE to hear how it goes or if you added or changed anything!! :)


3 comments:

  1. pocket chart are important to kids. is this true? Because these days kids love visual than verbal?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great Article it its really informative and innovative keep us posted with new updates. its was really valuable. thanks a lot.

    children education allowance exemption

    ReplyDelete

I always LOVE to hear from other teachers and bloggers so thank you so much for taking the time to comment!! It's so exciting to meet new people who share in your passion!