"Tea Party" Anyone?

Discussion #2

Recently, I’ve been trying a new strategy with my students to build background knowledge or at least allow students to activate their own thoughts or make connections to reading content. 

The strategy I’ve been using has been called “Tea Party” according to Kylene Beers’ When Kids Can’t Read, What Teachers Do (2002).  Basically the strategy’s purpose is to help students predict a passage, but it requires activating prior knowledge and revealing predisposed ideas and thoughts towards certain passages from the text. 

Procedure of the strategy:

-Choose a reading selection for students to read (I’ve chosen poems and nonfiction articles recently).

-Choose a certain number of phrases or words from the selection depending on size of class (I usually like to have about two times as many students for each phrase). 

-Write these phrases or words on an index card:  one phrase per card. 

-Instruct students that when they get the card they need to:

                -make a connection to the phrase (What does it remind you of?)
                -ask a question about it
                -express empathy if there is a character in the phrase
                -tell what you know about the phrase or what it might mean
                -tell what the phrase makes them think of or describe a mental picture they have as they read
                  the phrase

-Pass out one card to each student.

-Have students “Stand-up-Hand-up-and-Pair-up” with a partner and share about their card.  Move to a new partner when they are done sharing. 

-Do not have students trade cards when they are through sharing. I haven’t figured out yet if it would be beneficial to trade or not.  I feel the ability to keep the same card allows students to form a deeper connection with the phrase as they continue to share their thoughts about it.  They may gain new thoughts the more they discuss it

-When students are done sharing with classmates, invite students back into a group (or in my classroom, their original groups). 

-With group, students should be comparing ideas about their prediction of the reading selection.  Based on what they shared with partners, what do they think the reading selection will be about. 

-Students share prediction ideas.

-Teacher then reads selection out loud with students following along and students confirm or change their initial predictions.  Teacher also takes this time to help students understand difficult phrases by asking questions like, “What do we learn from the text that can help us understand this word/phrase better?”

My experience with this strategy:  I love that the students get to talk about their prior knowledge or what something makes them think of. 

This past week, I chose a reading selection about the Thirteen Colonies and certain events that led up to the Revolutionary War.  There were some difficult concepts in the passage.  One of the phrases I wrote down on a card was, “The British were meddling in Colonial affairs”.  Note, I was using this strategy with struggling readers who scored either a 1 or 2 on last year’s FCAT. 

One of the students said, “This phrase reminds me of Scooby Doo, when someone in Scooby Doo says—Those meddling kids!”  I was able to use his connection of the word meddling to help him draw out what the meaning of meddling was and how it applied to the British and the Colonies.  It was a moment of fulfillment for me!  A short moment, but still I felt the strategy was serving its purpose as students found more connections like these. 

Since using this strategy, students have had a better memory and recall of the articles and poems we have read.  And overall, I feel this strategy at least gets them used to activating their prior knowledge bank in their minds and realize that that’s what good readers do:  connect reading texts (even when it’s difficult to understand) to their own experiences. 

 

Reference: 

Beers, K. (2002). When kids can't read what teachers do:  A guide for 6-12 teachers.  Portsmouth, NH:  Heinemann.