TIP Presentations (Cubing)

I have truly enjoyed listening to my classmates the past two weeks present their TIPS and I am excited to implement some of them into my classroom.  Since I teach a section of 6th grade advanced science and I am always looking for ways to enrich this particular group of students, I decided to try the cubing method that Jason presented on in class.  Instead of playing a review game or giving the students review questions that I created, I came to the conclusion that I was going to incorporate cubing.  The students were given a cube template and some question starters for the different levels of Bloom's Taxonomy.  The students had to create questions for each level using the Energy Unit that we were concluding.  The students worked in groups to fill their cube template with the questions they created along with a key of sample answers to their questions.  When the students were finished I had two groups share their cubes with one another by rolling the cube and trying to answer the questions created by the other group.  The students seemed to really enjoy this activity and I felt that it was an effective way for the students to prepare for the upcoming assessment.

Socratic Seminar

I was excited to read about the Socratic Seminar because this was not a teaching model that I had previously learned about.  Even though this is a method that I am unfamiliar with, I know feel after reading and partaking in the Socratic Seminar in class that this is a method that I would like to use in my classroom.  I teach a section of advanced 6th grade science and my gifted students truly enjoy having discussions over topics, ideas, article readings, etc.  I would like to find a higher level article for my students to read about cells, which is our next unit, and have the students discuss questions that I create for the socratic seminar.  Before implementing this with my students, I would have to discuss some rules for the Socratic Seminar.  I would like to focus on having the students interact in a respectful manner by listening to the other classmates without interrupting (this will be a hard task for my advanced students!).

I will write another post soon to let everyone know how my experience goes with using this method.