Second-graders pay close attention to instructions while some already begin the discussion phase on how to improve their personal narratives. Ms. Jordan told her students that the peer review session is critical because “your partner might think of something that is wrong or help you find missing punctuation or even where dialogue may be needed.”

Chloe writes her observations and her inferences in a journal after working with classmates on a soil experiment in Ms. Metzger’s room.

Students in Melissa Young’s fourth grade class, like Colin Sasser, read independently and then shared their thinking about “The Hare and The Hedgehog” by jotting down comments in the margin of the printed worksheet. Others in the class spoke out during conversation time that one sentence in the story - “You may be short on legs, my dear, but you are long on brains” - meant the hedgehog was smarter than faster. He tricked the hare in a race by having his wife collaborate on being at one of the burrow, and he at the other. The trick came after the hare claimed “Speak to your own kind. I think myself too good for hedgehogs.” The ending showed a change in heart and an extended hand of friendship.