Using ‘Aha Moments’ to learn about Diversity and Inclusion

Posted on Friday, November 13th, 2020

Purple Cluster students in the Lexington Room put on their sleuthing hats and became “Aha Moment” detectives this week.

An “Aha Moment” is one of the signposts featured in the book “Notice & Note: Strategies for Close Reading” by Kylene Beers and Bob Probst.

Co-Teacher Rachel Fell said, “The signposts encourage comprehension and help students pay close attention as they are reading or listening to a story.”

An “Aha Moment” is when a character realizes something that changes the rest of the story. Finding an “Aha Moment” in a story indicates to students how the rest of the story will change.

“Students use a kinesthetic cue to help remember ‘Aha Moments’ and each hold up their signpost, such as a visual picture of the signpost on a popsicle stick, as they find it,” Ms. Fell said.

To practice this, Ms. Fell created a lesson centered around the book “Mixed” by Arree Chung. In the book, the colors red, yellow, and blue think they are the best colors and live separately in their own neighborhood.

However, yellow and blue become best friends and mix together to make baby green.

“After the other colors see how happy yellow and blue are when they mix, they have an ‘Aha Moment’ and realize that it is more fun to mix and make all different colors,” Ms. Fell said. “The story has a beautiful message that connects to our Social Studies and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion curriculum.”

After students read the book, they practiced their “Aha Moment” movement. They then did their own color mixing.

Everyone got a yellow, blue, and red circle of cellophane, and then experimented with overlapping the colors to see what new colors they could make.

“During this activity, the students conducted their own hands-on exploration of color mixing to experience the ‘Aha Moment’ that the colors had in the book,” Ms. Fell said.

The color mixing art projects are now hanging in the window of the Lexington Room so the class gets to see the light shine through and the colors mix just like they did in the book.