Tic Tac Toe and Strategies

This year, I'm really working on helping students to understand some of the key words behind our reading content. I've already talked about giving students a firm knowledge of the words feature and structure. As I started working with guided reading groups, I decided it was time to help students understand the word strategy.

How could I do this? Typically, my brain raced through lots of impractical and crazy ideas (a large scale game of Capture the Flag, for example) before I thought of a simple solution: Tic Tac Toe.

To get us ready for the discussion, students had to find a partner and sit at desks somewhere in the room. Then, we looked at the definition for strategy--"a plan for achieving a goal". We started out by talking with partners about our strategies in soccer. In soccer, the goal is--well, the goal, which made it very literal and concrete. After we made a list of soccer strategies, we talked about the goal in tic tac toe. What were we trying to accomplish? Of course, getting three in a row. Then, I chose a few students to go against me in a game of tic tac toe on the overhead, talking about our how we could both use a strategy.

After I played a few games, students worked with their partners to try out some strategies for tic tac toe. They needed the instant gratification that comes from applying a strategy and seeing it succeed. And it worked! They had quite a few strategies to share--use the middle, distract your opponent, set it up so that you had two opportunities to win--and were able to see pretty quickly the benefit of choosing a strategy.

I was amazed at how quickly the lesson on reading strategies went after this experience. What is our goal for reading? It's not to get three in a row (the kids all giggled at this), but to understand the text. What are some strategies that we can use? Suddenly, there were quite a few suggestions.

The next day, I had to leave school early to take my two sons to get their flu shots. I left behind a sorting activity that had students match reading strategies to their definitions. When I returned, I found (happily) that pairs of students working together could generate the different reading strategies and explain what they meant. Not bad for a 20 minute activity with a substitute! The richness of their understanding of the word strategy gave them an instant framework for the reading strategies.

Of course, there is much work to be done. We need to look at how to use strategies, when to change strategies, and how to see if our strategy use is working. For now, though, I'm pleased that the students have a better understanding of the word strategy than ever before.

And I have some killer new tic tac toe moves!

Dealing with the Misfires

I've worked with my students to put sticky notes to record their ideas as they read, and we've made all kinds of charts to collect our thinking and map our ideas.

"love that dog" is a writing journal written by a student named Jack. He responds to various poems that his teacher is teaching in class, which leads to neat instruction, as the students and I can share the poem, react, and then see how Jack reacts. Well, we were reading "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" when one of my students raised her hand. "I have a connection!" she said. "The kid's name is Jack, and this poem is written by Robert Frost, and when you put Jack and Frost together, you have Jack Frost!"

Sigh. When I work with my students to move beyond word calling and into connecting with text, I hear a lot of these kinds of comments, questions and connections and ideas that a more skilled reader would repress. In the same lesson, one of my students shared a question: "Why is the horse wearing bells?" Keep in mind that these are not coerced responses, written because I forced students to fill lines on a paper. These are their real, honest contributions to the conversation.

What’s a teacher to do? On the one hand, these kinds of connections can pull a reader away from the text. On the other hand, this student was really trying to make a connection. What I did for my student was to honor her thought--"Wow, you're really pulling on some background knowledge to make a connection"--and try to move her to different thinking--"But do you think that that's important for understanding the text? Let's read on and see." After a careful reading of the poem, she said that the Jack Frost comment didn’t really relate. But I made sure that she was the one to make that decision.

I used to get very frustrated and feel that these comments reflected badly on me and my teaching. But now I realize: They're thinking! They're coming to the party! They're trying it out! What more can I ask? These misfires are a natural part of the process for students who have looked upon reading as just saying the words. Now they're trying a new process, and it's a lot to coordinate all at once.

As students move from my lesson and into their independent books (ahh...peace and quiet!), I have the same issues. Sara's working on "Wanderer". As I talk with her about it, I notice that she has missed some of the big ideas. The book's a stretch for her, and I'm glad that she's giving it a try. And she's understanding some things, like the different voices of the two narrators and their reactions to the journey. Her experience with this book, even though she doesn't have full and complete comprehension, will inform her reading for future books, and she'll get there. She’s developing a taste for the stories that yield their secrets slowly. To force her to move to easier books just because she hasn’t coordinated the process yet would be a step in the wrong direction.

So, when students toss out those crazy responses, think about where they might be coming from. Is the students honestly trying to attach meaning to the words in the text? If so, don't be discouraged. Help the student to discover for herself whether the thought she shared will help her to understand the text.