Save The Last Word For Me

"Dependent readers are often reluctant to offer their opinions because they anticipate being wrong" (Beers, 2003, p. 172). Save the Last Word for Me is a great strategy to hear everyone's voice and reaction to a text, especially students who are quiet or do not often participate for a variety of reasons. Students are to choose a passage that they like and write it down along with a rationale of their passage choice. Students are then put into small groups. In my opinion, this seems like a good opportunity for very diverse, heterogeneous groups. Perhaps to familiarize students with this activity, though, they should begin in homogeneous groups. Each student has a chance to share their passage and then the remaining group members explain why they liked or disliked the passage. The "round" ends with the student who read the passage with their rationale, and hence has the "last word" on the subject.

I think this activity is a great way to hear everyone's opinions about a text the whole class is reading. However, I would be cautious of grouping certain students together. I have mentioned that heterogeneous groups seem like they would work best for this activity, but if I have extremely shy and self-conscious students, I will take that into consideration when grouping. I suppose I could call this "smart grouping," where it's not completely random and has a conscious effort by me to place everyone in a group that supports them. Another idea for grouping this activity could be static grouping for each text we read together. Therefore, students are comfortable with their group before offering their opinion and listening to their group members' opinions about what they liked.

Because the prompt for this activity is something that each student personally likes and the purpose is to get dependent or struggling readers talking, I would consider changing the purpose or prompt. I say this because I am still thinking of each students' confidence. They may not want to hear why another student dislikes the passage they chose. I might simply change the prompt to: "Find a passage that was interesting to you" or like Joe uses: "Find any 'bumps' in the text." Students will still be required to have a rationale, but this method seems less vulnerable.