6th Grade Language Arts Flip-Flop (Organizational Patterns)

Walnut 6th Grade Co-teachers Ms. Farlee and Ms. Mlinar were teaching Organizational Patterns for Nonfiction this week.  Ms. Farlee taught Sequential to half of the students while Ms. Mlinar taught Compare/Contract to the other half.  Then the students "flip-flopped" and the group that began with Ms. Farlee moved to work with Ms. Mlinar....and the students that began with Ms. Mlinar moved to work with Ms. Farlee.

This was a nice example of engaged students participating in conversation and small group instruction.  Additionally, this type of structure can be done by splitting students heterogeneously or homogeneously.  Ms. Farlee and Ms. Mlinar chose to split students by ability and the content was presented differently based on the students and their needs.

For the lower group, some of the strategies that Ms. Mlinar used included use of a lower lexile passage, as well as color coding text information to help students compare and contrast.  Ms. Farlee used repetition of information, checks for understanding, and using questions to facilitate students' understanding of the content.