Thinking Inside/Outside the Box

Purpose

Students analyze an assessment question (or text) by listing the most important facts inside the box and making inferences about the item (or text) outside the box.

Materials

• Assessment question (or text) as the stimulus for the strategy (projected)
• Thinking Inside/Outside the Box handout
• Thinking Inside/Outside the Box template – Math, Science, Social Studies (English/Spanish)
• Thinking Inside/Outside the Box template – RLA (English/Spanish)
• Notebook paper (if handout is projected)

Instructions

1. Students draw a large square in the middle of a sheet of paper and write 1 2 3 4 5 as a list in the center (or use the provided template).
2. Project an image of the assessment item.
3. Ask student elbow partners to think, talk, and write inside the box the 5 most important facts/details represented in the question or text.
4. Using Musical Mix-Freeze-Group, students get a new partner to think, talk, and write the following inferences outside the box, using the stems provided:
   • An important word is _____ and it means _____.
   • If the visual could talk, it would tell me _____ (list 3 things).
5. Take student pop-out responses and clarify/verify the important words/visuals in the item.
6. Using Musical Mix-Freeze-Group, students get another partner to think, talk, and write the following inferences outside the box, using the stems provided:
   • The correct answer is _____ because _____.
   • I should be careful not to _____.
7. Take student pop-out responses and clarify/verify the correct answer and mistakes to avoid.

Option for Analyzing Text: When using text as the stimulus instead of an assessment item, change the outside the box questions to prompts such as “I wonder, I predict, I conclude, I infer, I can justify, I can summarize, I can connect this to, etc.”

Classroom Management

• Model or role-play how to work with an elbow partner for thinking inside the box, then model or role-play how to get 2 new partners in the Musical Mix-Freeze-Group rounds for thinking outside the box.
• Model a think-aloud for this activity several times with students following the teacher’s lead before asking students to participate independently.

Differentiation

• Promote access by providing the inside the box important facts and/or providing more detailed sentence stems for outside the box thinking.
• Provide response support by allowing students to dictate answers to a scribe or capture ideas through speech-to-text technology assistance.

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:
  • Predict how this strategy could help prepare you to answer other test questions or understand a complex text.
  • Connect this strategy with the thinking associated with another test question.
• Encourage students to use lead4ward’s Thinking Stems (English/Spanish) to frame their responses, if needed.