Students take ownership of a reading expert's ideas, and my TA teaches using InspirationLite App

The geeky moment: I watched as my students, led by my TA, built upon Kelly Gallagher's reasons for reading and added their own reasons.  They also used InspirationLite, a great mind mapping and outlining template app to facilitate the discussion.

The geeky details:

Early in the year, my class spent a day on what I call "Thinking About Reading Thursday" discussing the reasons why they read.  We used the Socrative app for them to respond to the question and they got to anonymously or publicly vote on and discuss their reasons for  why they read. I use Socrative  to ask an open-ended poll question/conversation starter. Once they have all responded, they get to vote on each others' reasons.  So I asked them to tell me in about two minutes "Why I Read."

 

Then we had a more open ended discussion using those answers as a springboard, where a lot of them shared which response they had posted and gave further examples, and then others shared their own examples.  We also connected this discussion with amazing reading expert Kelly Gallagher's 10 reasons to read from his book Reading Reasons. 

I had laminated each of his reasons on separate sheets of purple paper, so as we discussed their Socrative posts, they naturally connected to most of Gallagher's reasons, and then for the last few, my amazing TA and friend Angela helped them see connections, so we were able to post each reason on the wall as we discussed.

Since then, on "Free Read Fridays" they have been filling out responses--to share at the end of hour aloud--where they pick a quote from their book and write how they are modeling and applying one of Gallagher's reasons to read. They then post their colorful responses on the wall next to the reason they discussed. 

 

 

Hopefully we can use this as a visual, colorful daily reminder of the value of reading. 

A couple weeks later, Angela pointed out to me that while they do seems to be covering all of Kelly Gallagher's 10 reasons, they kept gravitating toward the ever popular "Reading is rewarding" reason. So Angela volunteered to lead a "Thinking about Reading Thursday" discussion about what we can add to Gallagher's list and make it our own. She found this awesome free app called InspirationLite that has countless mind map templates (Some of you may use or have used software like this--I know my district had it a few years ago.) 

She and the students used the app and their previous wall posts to come up with their own specific ways and reasons that "reading is rewarding."

 

 

 So since then the students have been posting on both Gallagher's reasons and ours.

There are so many moments I've enjoyed about these ongoing discussions. 

First, how lucky am I to have a TA who is a qualified and thoughtful certified English and ESL teacher? Plus, Angela's had an iPad for a while, so she is frequently trouble shooting and solving problems around the room. She also found this great InspirationLite app that I'm definitely suggesting to my AP students for their research paper outlines, as it turns a mind map into an outline with a click of a button--in correct MLA format!!! (English teachers would agree with me that the excessive exclamation mark isn't overkill here.)

Here are some of the many InspirationLite templates:

 

Second, I enjoyed watching the students take ownership and add to Gallagher's awesome ideas. (Have I gushed yet about how much I like his writing?) And I love that I got to observe as Angela took the lead in the discussion.