KWL 2.0

I love to use literacy strategies that allow for both individual and collaborative thought. I've used the KWL strategy to help my sophomore students gather and display information that they've learned about William Shakespeare and life in Elizabethan/ Jacobean England in the past. This was a creative, visually powerful method of showing those who enter our classroom what we've learned, but this year I wanted to be able to show this learning to the world. How? Well, I went through a bunch of ideas before I remembered the pre-made concept sort file that I'd saved last year. I took this basic file (created in pages) and used it for a KWL. I projected the sort on my screen and voila! We had an instant, live, collaborative KWL to use in the classroom. Here is the blank template:


I first asked the entire group of sophomores to think for a silent thirty seconds or so about what they remembered from last year's Shakespeare webquest. As you can see, they didn't retain a whole lot of information. Most students were able to come up with at least one fact about Shakespeare, even if it was simply the title of one of his plays. After this group knowledge collecting/ refresher, students were given another silent thirty seconds or so to think of the questions that they'd like to have answered about Shakespeare. They came up with some awesome questions. Then, students chose partners and worked in pairs to find answers to the questions they'd asked. They also looked for random, interesting facts about Shakespeare's life and Elizabethan/ Jacobean England. I had emailed each student a blank template so that they could fill-in their findings and send it back to me. As I received their emails, I took their information and copied it into the "learned" column. (I decided to type rather than use the tiles because there were so many facts.) Here is the end result of our efforts:

This is now a document that we can add to, reuse, refer back to, and keep for our next Shakespearean experience. As much as I loved using and looking at the huge bull's eye bulletin board of the previous KWL chart, this one is much more functional and it's way easier to read. I plan to use this strategy again!

KWL Chart

Like the Venn Diagram, the KWL chart is a strategy that I try not to overuse. I've had instructors who latch on to one or two strategies and use them in every unit and this practice bores me. I'd rather use a strategy such as this one sparingly because it can be very fun and cool and useful but not if it's overdone.

That said, I've been using the KWL with my sophomores for quite some time. I like to use it as a pre-reading activity before we read Macbeth and The Merchant of Venice. I like this strategy because I have the same students (for the most part) when they're freshmen and I know that we complete a huge Shakespeare unit and webquest. I do not want to repeat this experience for them, so I like to honor that they may already have some knowledge (K) about Shakespeare from the previous year. This knowledge often reminds them that they've forgotten some information about Shakespeare, so this leads them to identifying what they'd like to know (W) about him. Once they're online and they have freedom to search around as they like, they often discover information about the Bard that they'd never known before because I'd always given them the sites or led them to information. Once they are on their own, they often discover some not-so-savory information, which peaks their interest in reading more from this saucy, controversial author (L).

The way this activity is carried out and presented also creates a powerful visual in the room. Others who're reading Shakespeare with me in other classes are drawn to the visual and comment on it often. I like that the end product is easy to understand and demonstrates and growth and gathering of knowledge in a way that a poster or Popsicle stick replica of the Globe Theater might not.