Tips-n-Tricks

**TCIS- Grade 1 -'Donut Partners' activity before writing**
Before sending students off with paper and pencil to work on writing, Help them organize their thoughts and think more deeply about their topic through **Donut Partners**. Divide the class in half, form an inner circle who sit facing outwards and an outer circle who then sit facing in, each looking at one of the inner circle students. At the prompt they have 1 minute to each tell their partner what they will write about. At the signal, a tamborine, the outer circle move around to the next person and the process repeats. We guide students to retell the same ideas, but build on those and think of more details to add. As students get better at it they will need more time for both to finish talking. After a few rounds of this, they can't wait to get to their pencils and paper! Joseph Snider, ESL Teacher