In the Hot Seat

your curly comrade, Suzanne

Welcome to Day 3 of our blogging blitz!  Be sure to check out Day 1 and Day 2.

Especially around test time, I want my students to feel a strong sense of accountability.  Hot Seat is a questioning game where students are expected to be on their toes- ready to think and answer.  

To make this work, provide students with a deck of Say It cards as shown above.  You could provide questions or sentence stems to get your students talking.  I like these question stems from Kelly Gallagher's Deeper Reading:

• What lesson(s) have we learned from a specific character?
• What technique did the author use in this chapter to hold the readers' interest?
• Why did the author write this passage/chapter/book?
• How does the author use setting to advance the story?

Other supplies include dice, a text for independent reading, and a copy of the rubric.  

Either the teacher or students can chunk the text.  Students read until coming to the agreed upon stopping place.  Students will roll the die, and the person with the highest number is in the Hot Seat.  The student in the Hot Seat draws a card responds to the prompt listed.  Other students assess the response and provide feedback using a point system. (See rubric below.)  The student records their points, and the person with the most points wins a cool prize or pat on the back or high five or pride in their accomplishment.

To assess, have the student pick a question to take through the SAQ model and grade that.  

Tomorrow, check back for another high-energy, high-yield review strategy!