Carouseling

Although the instructional strategy of carousel brainstorming may not have as many bright lights, flashy colors, and bouncy music as an actual carousel, it works as an effective mid-level teaching technique and will yield more lasting educational results than a twirly carnival ride.

Carousel brainstorming, which involves groups of students rotating to various stations around the classroom and responding to questions, is developmentally appropriate for middle schoolers. The strategy appeals to students' social, intellectual, and physical developmental domains. As adolescents, students want social interaction and need to work on developing positive relationships with their peers. By being in groups with their peers and talking about ideas and information, students are practicing expressing their views. In addition to the carousel brainstorming activity appealing to the social development domain, it also appeals to the intellectual domain. Students are encouraged to respond to the question at their station, which involves relying on their current knowledge and synthesizes others' ideas. Depending on the topic of the question, students could be responding to anything from elements of a story to different parts of speech, in the ELA classroom. Carousel brainstorming also appeals to students' physical domain because it allows students to move frequently (every two to five minutes) around the classroom as if they were on a gaudy horse, circling around a mirrored music-player.

While carousel brainstorming presents some classroom management issues, with proper facilitation, the teacher can prevent the disruptions. To control the noise level of students' chatty discussions, teachers can diligently keep track of time and ensure that the questions are able to elicit a plethora of answers. Similarly, keeping the students moving will keep them focused on answering the question and not talking about their social lives or the weekend. Providing enough stations will also allow the activity to continue and last the duration of the desired period. Being in control of other "structural" aspects, such as giving each group a separate color marker and telling students to switch recorder at each station, will also ensure the fluidity and success of the activity.

In the ELA mid-level classroom, the carousel brainstorming activity would be appropriate to introduce and brainstorm proper nouns, as this lesson plan demonstrates. (Although the lesson plan labels it a "gallery," it more resembles a carousel activity to me because students move around and add their examples of proper nouns to each category. What is the difference between a "gallery" and a "carousel"?) Or, this review activity uses carousel brainstorming as a larger review session from a unit. Other carousel sessions could prompt students to come up with other parts of speech, examples of literary devices (metaphor, simile), or discuss characters' personalities from literature.

The carousel brainstorming activity is a developmentally appropriate intellectual, social, and physical activity for mid-level students. With proper planning, classroom management disruptions can be minimized and student learning maximized. While this educational tool does not have blinking lights and carnival colored horses, it can make learning fun.