Techy Toolbox 2: Google Docs "Chunking" Activity

Reading a difficult text in one, linear sitting is usually not too helpful if you want to retain information. Thus, reading teachers often teach the idea of "chunking" a text.

This is for larger texts where each paragraph has multiple ideas, or one idea is supported by multiple paragraphs. In short, not for five-paragraph essays with clear topic sentences and cookie-cutter organization. You know, how people actually write.

With this second Toolbox installment, I would like to explain how using Google Docs can help create a vibrant and productive environment for chunking.

First, you need to have all students connected through Google accounts. I have students make one with a specific user name. Then I add them all to my contacts. Thus, when I make a Google Document, I add all students and give them editor permissions. This document is simple and has student groups broken up into as many chunks as I or the class determines the text needs. Then each group takes that chunk and paraphrases what they think is the main idea. Pretty simple concept, really.

This helps them organize the reading into manageable pieces, and in my teaching sequence we use this to help write a summary later. For my version of the activity, each student group paraphrases the main idea for one section and then we review all the pieces together. Then students do this on their own as part of their reading and/or some assessment I create.

As you can see in this video (also embedded above), I project this so students can see how the outline is coming together. But they can see this on their screen as well.

Google documents is a word processor that allows people to collaborate, write and edit at the same time. Everyone with permission can edit and contribute to the document, and the document saves automatically. All students need to do to access it is log into their account, access their Google Drive and find the document in "incoming." For my purposes here, I obviously don't explain Google Drive and Docs in detail, so watch this and look for a coming post where I explain it more.

Like many of the ideas in the Techy Toolbox, this is an classic activity. Teachers usually put students into groups and then they write their paraphrase on the whiteboard. The advantage here is students will have this document for later review, and it uses technology, which is much more engaging than whiteboards and dry erase markers.

As always, I hope this helps spark some great ides for using technology in the classroom. If you have questions about logistics or rationale, leave them in the comment box below.

Cheers
~vince