Another Little Idea That Has Been Helping

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5 thoughts on “Another Little Idea That Has Been Helping”

  1. Very interesting post, Ben! I was playing with my kids today, challenging them to add ideas to a pre-written text by using a list of verbs that we’ve covered this year. (I’m about to have three days of a sub, and I wanted them to see all the possibilities and figure out how they could add stuff that they knew how to say to expand stories.)
    You said something else that I need on my wall: “If they can’t answer with one word, it is not circling.” Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of non-circling, asking kids “Why” a lot. The “why” questions interfere with the flow of circling. But that leads me to wondering: if the purpose of circling is to help teach the language, at which point does the “why” stuff come in? The “why” seems to help me figure out which kids are ready to talk and what structures are falling out of their mouths.

  2. Like this idea, too. I can see how this strategy would help a quiet group; a loud, unfocused group; or a group just in need of a little change of pace. Thank you!
    Your idea of having students write their ideas on paper, rather than say them out loud, seems to help me with quiet classes, too -it’s a safe place for students to contribute their ideas and gives them more time to think (with the loud classes, it gets them to be quiet – bonus!).

  3. The why questions and the detail questions are what used to be called “parking” and that’s how we advance the story. We add a new detail, then we circle, then we go back, then we add a new detail. At least, that’s my understanding of it.

  4. Thank you! I did understand that “parking” meant sitting in a place, but not in the context of circling. This makes a lot of sense. I am getting back to circling too. Circle a lot, park a little.
    Another thing I like in Ben’s piece is: “. . . every three or four sentences. . .” It doesn’t have to be every bit, just the parts that are the structures for repetition.

  5. I find that throwing the why questions out to more advanced individuals helps boost their egos and keeps them from getting too bored. So I’d say that we circle with one-word answers with the whole group but ask questions that require longer, more thought out answers of individuals who seem to crave the extra challenge / attention. I like to sprinkle the circling with such higher order questions to keep the questioning interesting.

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