Forgoing the Compliment

March 20, 2009

Sharing at the end of Daily 5™ or any workshop can be a powerful teaching time. To build our sense of community and encourage student engagement, we often ask listeners to give a compliment to a student after they have shared. A twist on this is to ask the students who are listening to identify what the reader or writer is working on based on what they shared. This not only helps keep students involved, but encourages them to focus on and identify strategies.

For example, Faith read a few pages of a story with lots of expression. Carson raised his hand and said, "She is working on her fluency".

While reading his book, Ashton stopped and thought aloud, "I have read books by this author before and I know she uses a lot of flashback, so I think this flashback is going to be important in this story". Bravik raisied his hand and remarked, "I think you are thinking about the author's purpose, is that your goal?"

Thinking about and identifying the goals and strategies being used by their classmates helps move our thinkers past common compliments like, "I like how you read that." Those are ok and totally authentic once in awhile, but it's to everyone's benefit if we can go even deeper.