Twitter, Tweets, & Graffiti- Bright Ideas

I had a conversation this past week with my third graders about Twitter.  They sort of knew about it; that it was something some of their parents did.  So I did a quick run through about what it was to use Twitter and to tweet.

My post today is part of a Bright Ideas blog hop.  Nothing but great, practical ideas from a whole bunch of fabulous bloggers!  Now back to Twitter....

We are currently learning about questioning the text.  Believe it when I tell you that some students do not realize that reading is thinking and understanding what they read.  Some just do not know that they should be thinking too & that it should be thinking about the text, not what they will be having for lunch that day!

Tabletop Twitter

I did a post a long time ago about using Tabletop Twitter (you can click here to read that original post).  It is such a fun and super engaging activity for students to do.  Students get to use some higher level thinking skills as they work through this.

The original way to use Tabletop Twitter is to take a passage from the text that students are reading and place it on the table in the middle of bulletin board paper.  The passage should ideally be something that is thought provoking or can be thought about from different perspectives.  I used more than one table.  You can have different passages or the same one.  Set a timer and students, without talking, move from table to table writing down their thoughts on the paper.  As they move around, they are reading other's thoughts and responding to them.  The teacher gets involved and participates too.  Students love when the teacher comments or "tweets" in response to their "tweet".  It is a great way to get in a lot of reading, writing and deeper thinking!

So...back to Questioning the Text!  This time we did Tabletop Twitter, I didn't give them a passage to "tweet" about.  We had been keeping our questions about each chapter in our Reader's Notebook.  But I like to mix it up to keep things interesting so we did questioning the text Tabletop Twitter style and they loved, loved it!  There was much more interaction, reading, and writing going on this way than just doing it on their own.  

We are reading this mystery, jotting down questions about the text as we go and keeping track of clues.  By doing the Tabletop Twitter the students were able to write their questions about what was happening and then they responded to each other which lead to new thinking and sometimes cleared up some confusions.

As you can see on this thread of "tweets" a question was asked and lots of responses were "tweeted"!  Real, authentic reading and writing going on.  Real world stuff.  

This is how we are keeping track of the clues to the crime and the suspect and our thoughts about it.  This is my students first mystery so I have to teach them how to be looking for those clues that the author throws out without announcing that they are important.  They are so excited about this book and leave not hardly being able to wait until the next day to see what will happen next.  And that is exactly what my goal is!!  Build up reading, writing and thinking skills and a love for books!  Yay!!!

This is called a Graffiti Table activity.  I have wipe off table so I can have students just write right on them.  They are the coolest things (expensive, but still very cool)!  If you do not have wipe off tables, just throw on some bulletin board paper just like for the Tabletop Twitter.  This is a great warm up activity or review activity before getting started.  This group had been reading and learning about sharks.  We had read some of the text the day before, so before we began on a new day, I wanted to revisit the text and what they had learned.  Set a timer and then let them just write graffiti style all over the table words or phrases that were important to their learning.  They are remembering what they learned plus reading what others learned so you have a great review time in quick style!!  

Now, you are going to want to hop on over to Amanda's blog to read about how to organize classroom games!  She has some great ideas for you that you do not want to miss out on.  Click her button below to get there.

I hope you get some bright ideas today that help you in your classroom!