Increasing Tolerance through Immigration

A concept sort is a comprehension strategy in which students sort new vocabulary into categories.

Guess the Covered Word challenges students’ vocabularies and reading comprehension by requiring them to deduce words redacted from a text.

Meet New Vocabulary uses a graphic organizer to help students acquire new vocabulary while reading. This strategy is most effective when teaching challenging, domain-specific words (Tier Three).

A word wall is an organized display of vocabulary words drawn from central texts students are reading.

“Annolighting” (annotating and highlighting) shows students how to identify critical information in a text during close reading. Students learn to annotate text, highlight important facts and summarize what they have read to capture main ideas, concepts and details.

QAR gives students practice questioning the text and identifying literal and inferential questions. Students learn to find different types of evidence and to rely on their own interpretation when doing close reading.

In shared reading, learners observe experts reading with fluency and expression while following along or otherwise engaging with the text. This strategy should focus on a specific instructional element (or mini-lesson) that improves targeted reading comprehension skills and promotes Common Core readiness.

During Brain Share, small groups of students rotate through stations, discussing and recording concepts from central texts. This strategy is a modified combination of gallery walks and jigsaw.

Fishbowl is a strategy for organizing medium- to large-group discussions. Students are separated into an inner and outer circle. In the inner circle, or fishbowl, students have a discussion; students in the outer circle listen to the discussion and take notes.

Text Talk Time is a whole class discussion that facilitates rich dialogue, active listening and use of textual evidence.