The Process
Cranium CoRE uses a web based system to thoroughly engage students and give them the skills to really comprehend the content of a book.
This process involves three, possibly four, steps:
Step 1 - Read Aloud
Reading along as a book is read aloud either by a teacher, a student or an audio device. The advantage of using an audio device is it will provide literacy modeling at its best due to the use of professional actors as narrators with multiple voices utilized.
Additionally, having the students eventually and occasionally read aloud will offer an excellent exercise in elocution for them.
Step 2 - Playing a TV style game show
Playing a TV style game show in teams using mobile devices or radio frequency (RF) devices, one per team, to answer questions that appear on the game show image that is projected on a large screen so all the participants can easily see it.
The questions that are used for this part of the process are most often higher order thinking type questions that require more than just a literal response about what is remembered from the text.
This part of the process has the additional value of encouraging collaboration with team members through communication skill development and conflict resolution techniques.
The mobile devices and RF devices are a critical component because they provide a great vehicle for this team process to flow effortlessly and easily in a classroom setting.
Step 3 - Discussion to Defend
A meta-cognitive discussion to defend the answers and prove them contextually with an open book.
Step 4 - Compose own questions
Longer term it would be advisable to encourage members of the community to compose their own questions for Cranium Core games about literature, thereby increasing their ability to write. It has often been stated that if you know material well enough to write questions about it, you have demonstrated your mastery of the material.
The whole process is open book with the goal of practically exercising how to really understand the author’s purpose for the composition being read.
This is a life long learning skill that will aide the members of the community no matter what curriculum or job they pursue.