Introducing the strategy, Dump and Clump

Title Choose a selection from your content area in the unit you are teaching.

Background for This is a great strategy to use when the students are faced with learning new and
the Teacher difficult information. It provides students with a process for organizing their prior
knowledge and making projections. Depending on the subject matter, this strategy
could utilize up to a full class period.

Purpose of The purpose of the lesson is to provide a step-by-step process for organizing
Lesson thinking and facilitating learning of new and difficult material.
Students will consider how words in the text are related and different. Pull the
words out of the dumpster and clump them into categories
The learning for the lesson will emphasize strategic vocabulary presented in the
selection.

Text · Short, worthy passage applicable to your content area

· Newsela.com is a good site for pulling articles.
· Nettrekker is another site for pulling articles.

Instruction · Group students into small groups of 2-3

Procedure · "Dump"- Have students develop a list of words, items, or new information
related to the topic of study.
· "Clump"- Using the "dump" word list, students should then group words on the
list into categories and assign labels.
· Have students write a descriptive summary sentence for each category of
words in their list.
· Upon completion, these should be posted around the room or shared in
some manner with the entire class.

After- Reading · Students discuss within their groups or think-pair-share the different
Tasks categories for each of the selected vocabulary words.
· If you use Newsela.com, you will be provided the different Lexiles for
differentiation.

Extensions
Based on Discovery Education’s S.O.S. lesson
 Dump and Clump
Directions: Read the words in the Dumpster. Consider how these words are related and different. Then,
pull your words out of the dumpster and clump them into categories. Finally, assign your category labels
and on the back of your paper write a summary sentence describing each category.
The Dumpster

The Clumpster