A few years ago, at a professional development conference, I learned a strategy called “Quote, Quote, Mingle” from my middle school instructional coach. This strategy helps students gain knowledge by having conversations with their peers based on what they read. The more people you talk to, the more information you get, which helps you gain a more complete understanding of the topic. (I remember an article we read the other day about the panda’s sixth finger-a basic, thumb-like extension of the skeleton.)
This strategy may sound familiar. It has a lot in common with jigsaw puzzles, but while jigsaw puzzles require a group of students to become “experts” on different aspects of a topic and then share their findings with their classmates, citation, quotation, and hybrids require students to make assumptions about the text while asking questions and making inferences about the text based on reading a small portion of it.
As world language teachers, we try to integrate as many texts as possible to expand learners’ reading skills. However, teaching informational texts with Level 2 and Level 3 vocabulary is challenging, and this inevitably reduces learning engagement. So, in this case, I invited one of our Chinese teachers to try this strategy with her class, and it worked well in an elementary school setting.
The learning objective was to comprehend the main idea of a third grade Chinese informational text that describes the history of the potato and its impact on our daily lives. Before implementing the strategy, we also did some preparatory work to make the whole process clearer for the students to understand.
Beginning
The teacher and I broke down the informational text into smaller chunks. For example, we broke the text about potatoes into six parts and put them on index cards. Each student then received a card with a part of the text on it.
During the implementation, we followed the following steps.
- The teacher described the activity with this instruction: “We are going to read an article and you need to find the main idea of the article. You will walk around the classroom with an index card and exchange information with three classmates in what we will call a ‘mingle’. I also set a four-minute timer to remind you when the mingling session is over. You will then need to talk to another group of three and share ‘quotes’ from the last session.”
- The teacher then sets a timer to remind the students to be ready for the next communication and instructs them to talk to the other students. During this time, we all walk around the classroom to connect with any students who need help or more clarification.
- Next, the teacher instructed students to return to their initial groups and share the information they had gathered from these communication sessions. The teacher asks students to identify key ideas based on their group discussions and jot them down on chart paper.
- Students share their findings with the class and the teacher may comment on differences or similarities. In the final step, students read through the entire text and the teacher encourages them to identify the parts that are confirmed or refuted through discussion.
We emphasize that students need to discuss the main ideas with everyone they talk to. We found that this instruction created a meaningful opportunity for them to interact with the textbook and their peers.
3 Key Points for Citation Blending
- This activity engages students in meaningful conversation. It forces students to read the text carefully and summarize it before talking to their peers. They need to stay focused and remember what their peers are sharing as they exchange information.
- Quote, Quote, Mingle encourages active participation and cooperation in physical movement. We tend to think of teaching informational texts as challenging, and the most common approach is for teachers to explain difficult parts to students through direct instruction. However, this approach diminishes students’ active participation and ownership of their own learning. Using a collaborative approach in academic reading can help alleviate students’ anxiety when encountering unfamiliar topics.
- This strategy improves language proficiency and fluency. Reading these chewy little texts and summarizing them is a great exercise in reading comprehension. In addition, using conversations to exchange information requires students to adjust their word choice and delivery in a limited amount of time. The more they talk to their peers, the better chance they have of becoming fluent.
Incorporating collaborative strategies in language learning transforms students from passive recipients of reading to active learners. It also encourages students to think aloud as they interact with their peers, which helps them reflect on their understanding of the text.