Say Something! Comprehension Strategy

Today I am sharing a comprehension strategy I used and saw a lot of success with. It's called Say Something! Click on the picture to see the resource on TPT :)

This strategy works by giving students a series of prompts to use when participating in discussions. The prompts help them to articulate their ideas.

I started off by introducing a few prompts each day. We used them in whole class discussions about texts and what we had been learning about. Students would use the prompts to share their ideas with a partner, in small groups and then to the whole class. Once they were confident in using them, I incorporated the prompts into my guided reading groups to have a discussion about the text.

I created a "Say Something! Superhero" display on my wall with the prompts so the students could refer to it. After a while, I noticed that the prompts were being used automatically in their responses, both orally and written. Students who were a bit shy in answering questions, started to respond more often as they had the prompts to help guide their response.

It was also pretty good to hear the students using more sophisticated language.

For older grades these prompts can be used to facilitate discussion during literature circles.

This resource can be printed full size or scaled down for individual student cards.