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Showing posts from April, 2017

Collaborative Place Mats: A Brainstorming Technique for Middle School Humanities

I have been working closely with the literacy support teacher at my school recently.  She and I have been co-teaching a Grade 8 Social Studies class and today I'd like to share an activity that she introduced me to: Collaborative Place Mats.  This technique is especially helpful at the beginning of a project or inquiry to help groups start to brainstorm about their big idea, topic, or question. Before we began the activity, we talked as a class about what behaviours we wanted to follow as we worked in groups.  Students offered ideas, and they were recorded on chart paper. From their criteria, I created a self-assessment checklist for the students to use as a reflection after the activity. Once we had established the guidelines, we explained the place mat activity.  Here's how it works: Each table received a piece of chart paper with our project question in the middle.  In this case, the question was "How would you provide for people in a community."