Hi All!
The strategy that I use most frequently to avoid calling on the same students is pulling name sticks. My cooperating teacher has these great plastic pencils that are colored 5 colors. They have different shapes on the ends of them as well. The sticks I often use for grouping. I strategically placed the names on the sticks by color based on reading abilitites. When I pull the names from the cup I know based on the color of the stick that I'm drawing roughly where their reading ability is and can make sure I'm asking kids appropriate questions for their reading level.
When I'm not using the name sticks I find that if I add a longer pause to looking for hands that I get better responses from the students. I try to increase the wait time whenever I notice that there are only the same 5 hands in the air. This approach takes much more thought than the name stick approach.
Clever strategy for pulling reading groups together without making it obvious that you're grouping by ability. It's good to see your sensitivity to this "affective" aspect of teaching.
ReplyDeleteEmploying the "wait time" strategy is always a challenge in the beginning with a group of students, but once they come to trust that you truly will wait to see more (and different) hands raised before you call on anyone, the more they'll respond. And remember that the ideal goal of wait time isn't seeing who will finally cave and give you an answer so you can move on; it's to give kids time to think, which is a natural condition for learning, right? Thinking time=smart ideas.