CAROUSEL BRAINSTORMING
Carrousel Brainstorming is a literacy tool that allows students to get out of their seats and move about the classroom in small groups while generating new ideas about the content with which we are working.
The instructor generates three or four questions that are relevant to the text we are using.
Students will be placed into groups of four or five (depending on the classroom size). After reading the text as a class, we will discuss the questions that will need to be answering and why they are relevant to the day's lesson. I will clarify what is expected of the groups by letting the students know how long we will have for group discussion and the amount of time that will be allowed at each station. Students will then be allowed to break into their groups for discussion about the questions. This group-discussion time is an effective way for each student to voice opinions in an effort to generate a group answer; it allows each student to give his or her own input and listen to others' ideas, within the group, as they develop an answer upon which they can all agree.
Each group will be designated a color and given a marker of that color. The questions will be written on large, poster-board sized paper located at different stations throughout the room. Each group will move about the room writing their answers on the designated paper, in their group's respective color, based upon the answer that the group was able to generate as a whole after their discussion of the material.
This technique is effective because it can be used in a variety of ways to allow the students a variety of different levels of thinking based upon the questions. Questions can range from defining a word, or textual selection, to applying the text to a student's life.
The instructor generates three or four questions that are relevant to the text we are using.
Students will be placed into groups of four or five (depending on the classroom size). After reading the text as a class, we will discuss the questions that will need to be answering and why they are relevant to the day's lesson. I will clarify what is expected of the groups by letting the students know how long we will have for group discussion and the amount of time that will be allowed at each station. Students will then be allowed to break into their groups for discussion about the questions. This group-discussion time is an effective way for each student to voice opinions in an effort to generate a group answer; it allows each student to give his or her own input and listen to others' ideas, within the group, as they develop an answer upon which they can all agree.
Each group will be designated a color and given a marker of that color. The questions will be written on large, poster-board sized paper located at different stations throughout the room. Each group will move about the room writing their answers on the designated paper, in their group's respective color, based upon the answer that the group was able to generate as a whole after their discussion of the material.
This technique is effective because it can be used in a variety of ways to allow the students a variety of different levels of thinking based upon the questions. Questions can range from defining a word, or textual selection, to applying the text to a student's life.