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By Anne M.

I keep a bulletin board related to our reading theme. One side is for questions and the other for concepts. (This is one of the requirements of my district's new reading series, Open Court) I thought this would be a hassle
at first until I decided to turn it over to the students. I demonstrated what type of questions students should ask. No yes or no answers. We talked about approprite additions to the concept side such as pictures, newspaper articles, stories or paragraphs students have written,survey results, graphs, book reviews or anything else related to the theme. Each day, I direct their attention

to a list of "workshop activities" to choose from once they complete their morning assignments. These usually include easy activities such as study spelling words with a friend, read silently alone or with a buddy, etc. as well as suggestions to write a new question for the bulletin board, choose a question to answer, write a theme related story etc. I only give about 4 choices each day. I try to include activities that appeal to different types of learniers.
I wondered if my class would handle the independence. I work in a very inner city school with many discipline problems. However, my class loved the idea of "owning" a bulletin board and are coming up with all kinds of creative additions. I only require that I proofread the additions before they are added. (Our theme is competition, so I bought ball-shaped notepads for the kids to write their final copies on) They love this bulletin board idea so much that they have already taken over two bulletin boards and are asking for a third!
I use part of the morning assignment/ workshop time to do record keeping, reteach with small groups, conference with students or observe. In addition, it gives high ability students an outlet while slower students or tardy kids have time to get their morning work done. I always specify the time we must stop and stick to it. We wrap up the period with a discussion about the new additions to the board which spotlights the kids who added something new, strengthens everyones understanding of the theme and their speaking skills.
It took some guidance and pestering to keep them on task at first but once they got the idea, it has led to some excellent self-directed learning!