By: Shawna Maston-Rayner
Reading Interventionist at Dickinson Middle School
I am a reading interventionist at Dickinson Middle School. In January, I attended a professional development session on Kagan Structures. If you are not familiar with Kagan Structures, they are activities designed to enhance student engagement and promote individual accountability.
As a reading interventionist, I work with smaller classes, which allows me to better identify and focus on the reading skills that students are struggling with. Many of the programs we use are not very engaging for the students, making it difficult to capture their interest. However, incorporating Kagan Structures into my lessons has proven effective in boosting student engagement.
I wanted to start small by implementing one instructional structure first. This approach would allow both the students and me to learn the routine effectively. The structure I chose to enhance reading comprehension was called Placemat Consensus. My 7th-grade class was concluding a unit on Marco Polo and needed to write a one-paragraph summary of the text.
To kick off the activity, I asked the students to brainstorm important details from the text. They were instructed to jot their thoughts on a pre-made placemat placed in the center of their tables, and I gave them three minutes for this task. Afterward, I facilitated a Round Robin, where each student shared the details they had written down. The entire group needed to reach a consensus on whether each detail was significant enough to include in their summary. If they agreed that it was important, they would add the detail to the center of their group's placemat. However, if they could not reach an agreement, the student who proposed the detail had to provide evidence from the text to persuade their group of its importance.
In the end, the students had a variety of details to choose from, which they could use to create their summaries.
I observed that students were actively engaged in the lesson, which is the intended result of using Kagan Structures. They gained a deeper understanding of the material and were able to write well-crafted summaries of Marco Polo. I was truly amazed by the discussions I heard!