Focused Listing

Purpose

Students collaborate to develop comprehensive lists associated with the major visuals, concepts, questions, or texts in a unit.

Materials

• Chart paper, each with a different visual, concept, question, word, or text from the unit
• Markers (different colors for each group)

Instructions

1. Place the prepared posters around the room.
2. Organize students evenly among the posters.
3. Provide each group member with a marker of their group’s assigned color (to help groups keep track of which posters they’ve already visited).
4. Groups collaborate to list as many related words, visuals, events, characters/people, examples, main ideas, etc. for each poster. (Each student must add at least 1 idea to the original, first poster.)
5. Groups rotate to the next poster at the teacher’s signal and add to the list.
6. After all groups have contributed ideas to each poster, groups return to their original poster to analyze the comments and complete a 1-minute verbal summary of the main ideas.
7. Students write a one-sentence summary of what they learned about each topic in a graphic organizer or their journals.
8. Observe students’ thinking and clarify/verify additions, confirm strikethrough, and answer questions as appropriate.

Classroom Management

• Assign student groups and their specific posters.
• Move one group at a time to their assigned poster to avoid chaos.
• Model the rotation path.
• Use music as your movement signal.

Differentiation

• Promote access by previewing the assigned poster topics/visuals and allowing the use of student/teacher notes/summaries.
• Provide response support by providing an idea/word bank.
• Provide response support by allowing students to dictate ideas to a scribe and/or allowing speech-to-text or word prediction support if completing the task digitally.

Think It Up!

• Have students think more deeply about the concept by responding to a Think It Up prompt as an exit ticket or journal entry:
  • Make a connection between 3 of the posters. How are they related?
  • Evaluate all the posters and justify one word as the most important for each topic.
• Encourage students to use lead4ward’s Thinking Stems (English/Spanish) to frame their responses, if needed.