Monday, April 15, 2013

Red Light-Yellow Light

Connect: Almost every Friday, Shannon Umberger and I get our classes together for Nonfiction Friday.  The kids read an issue of Scholastic News or Time for Kids in partners. Shannon and I have adapted the Red Light-Yellow Light routine to accommodate the needs of our students and what we wanted them to get out of the activity. We added a green light to have a third area.

What I did: In partners or small groups, the students read Time for Kids or Scholastic News. Then, they write their thinking on sticky notes. For red, the students identify the main idea of the article. For yellow, they write a question they had while reading. For green,  the students identify new learning.

Extend: In order to really make this routine effective, we have used it (so far) for a total of 13 weeks! Now it truly has become a routine and the students are able to identify each part of their thinking easily. Their questions are becoming deeper and you can really see their thinking becoming more collaborative. I have noticed that after so many weeks of doing this routine, students have become much better at identifying the main idea of their readings in class and not only during Nonfiction Fridays.

In the beginning, the main challenge I experienced was that the student’s questions were not very deep. They would ask questions about why an animal was a certain color, or why a character was named something. It was a challenge to get them to think about their questions regarding the actual contents of the story rather than about some minute detail.


  1. Jaime, I just love the way you and Shannon have made this a real routine in your classroom. It seems like the perfect way to have your children explicitly use the thinking strategies while they read non-fiction closely. So often I use a strategy, keep the visual representation up for awhile and then take it down, but the way you created the Red-yellow-green light with stickies makes it enduring. :)

  2. Jaime, I echo what Val said. You two have really made it a working routine! I will look at my plans for the end of the year with your guys and apply it as well. Thank you for laying the foundation for us!