Using thought bubbles and speech bubbles to teach predicting.

We had a happy accident happen in Mme Hawtree's grade 1 class this week. We have special guest come and speak to us about our feelings and thought and the words that we say. She used thought bubbles and speech bubbles to show the difference between the things we say and the things we think.

Later that day in science we were talking about predicting. I asked the students to pick 3 items in the classroom and predict if they would roll or slide or do both. After they had made their prediction they were suppose to test the item and then record their prediction and what actually happened in their science journals.

One of my bright stars had a suggestion... "We could use thought bubbles for what we think will happen and speech bubbles to show what actually happened!" Many of my students ran with this idea. It became very clear for me and the student what was their guess and what was their prediction.

Using bubbles to show thinking

Predicting is often a tricky topic to teach in grade 1. Students have a difficult time sorting between I THINK and I KNOW. The little perfectionists in my room are often on the hunt for erasers so that they can change their prediction to the correct answer. Using thought bubbles and speech bubbles seemed to help this a problem. Students were okay with thinking the wrong thing.... after all it was just a thought and not voiced yet. The really important thing, the thing they would say out loud was the right answer in the speech bubble.

Using Venn diagram to show thinking

What did I learn at school today? My students continue to surprise me with their ideas and suggestions. I love the idea of using thought bubbles to show our predictions and speech bubbles to show our findings. I am thinking of using this in math and in reading as well. What about you? How do you teach predicting? Have you ever had a student teach you a better way to teach something? Do you already use speech bubbles and thought bubbles?

Some resources:

Enchanted learning thought bubbles, speech bubbles
Speech bubble writing paper

Comments

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What I learned at school today

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