Think Tac Toe!

At the end of January, I attended FETC (Florida Educational Technology Conference) in Orlando, FL. This is a great conference, however sometimes it's challenging to find sessions that really interest me. This year's sessions were a real treat! There was so much to choose from. My focus this year was anything "podcast" and anything pertaining to online professional development. I didn't find much on online professional development (note to self - apply to present for the next FETC on developing online professional development for educators), however I found several wonderful sessions on podcasting, blogs and wiki's.

One of the sessions I attended was presented by 2 delightful elementary teachers. They shared how they integrate the use of podcasting in reading, writing and literacy activities. They shared how they search for free audiobooks at iTunes, by searching for podcasts. They also shared some examples. Now, here is the tasty morsel that I really enjoyed hearing about - they use something called a "Think-Tac-Toe" for their student-created projects. Using this instructional strategy in your classroom will require purposeful planning on your part, but here are the basics:

• Identify 9 activities around a particular topic and make sure that each of the different learning styles is represented within those 9 activities. In the example shared in the presentation, many of the activities seamlessly integrated the use of technology (i.e. create a song in GarageBand, write an additional chapter to a favorite story or book in Word, film a Book Talk using digital video and edit it in iMovie or MovieMaker, record and submit a podcast book summary, interview with a book's author, etc.)
• On a poster (or do this electronically), draw the traditional Tic-Tac-Toe grid
• In each square on the grid, write a description of the activity.
• Make sure that multiple learning styles are represented in the grid.
• Instruct the students to select a row of activities to complete either horizontally, diagonally, vertically. When they finish, they have completed their Think-Tac-Toe!

One of the main advantages for this type of learning activity is that you automatically have student by-in and student acountability, since they select their activities. You're also able to meet the needs of each student by addressing different learning styles. You can differentiate instruction using the Think-Tac-Toe grid.

Here is an example of a Think-Tac-Toe

Explanation and example of a Think-Tac-Toe

Think-Tac-Toe and differentiating instruction

When I first heard about this, I Googled "Think-Tac-Toe" and got less than 100 results. Tonight I Googled it and got over 1800! It looks like Think-Tac-Toe is growing in popularity as the word spreads.

Thanks for reading! I hope that you'll be able to find a way to use Think-Tac-Toe in your classrom.