Student Sample: Getting the Facts
Getting the Facts: Students used this strategy to review their comprehension of a reading selection. The first time the activity was completed, whole class instruction was used to model the strategy and provide feedback, answer questions, and clarify procedures. Students then created their own sentence to expand. Not only did the students gain information and clarify understanding but they also learned how to develop complex sentences. Parts of speech, dependent clauses, independent clauses, prepositional phrases, and sentence variety were taught through content acquisition. Students culminated the activity by writing a new sentence to use with the Getting the Facts questions and snowballing. The recipient of the snowball wrote one complex sentence on the back of the snowball using the Getting the Facts questions. To exit the students had to answer the questions satisfactorily for the writer of the Getting the Facts snowball. Students reported that the strategy was a valuable learning tool and hoped that it will be included again in class.