Collaborative Student Groups: Get Set

A positive classroom culture promotes student engagement, efficiency, and academic growth. Culture influences how and why students learn and ties the students to the teacher on a personal level. Check out the video below to see how Raul’s culture impacts student achievement!

EEKK Think Pair Share is a fun variation on a traditional Think, Pair, Share that is useful for younger students. As an indicator to my students that they must engage in discussion with one another, I will say "Go EEKK," which stands for "elbow, elbow, knee, knee." Students recite the simple chant, “Elbow, elbow, knee, knee” and face each other knee-to-knee in the process to discuss whatever topic I have chosen. The EEKK strategy gives my students a structured way for engaging in collaborative, on-topic academic discourse.

I teach students how to read by focusing on the use of phonics rules to decode words of all types. Phonics Word-Coaching is a strategy where students refer back to the various strategies they've learned. Through the use of diacritical marks to label specific sounds in words, students take apart words and reblend them in order to read the words. The idea behind it is that eventually students will recognize these strategies without having to actually write the diacritical marks and are able to do it by sight. It's fact fluency for the reader.