Immersion Strategies.

Four classroom activities useful for language immersion instruction are described and specific applications and extensions are noted. All are best used to teach content and language at the same time. The first, entitled "Think-Pair-Share," is a cooperative learning technique that increases student participation in classroom experiences and increases opportunities for students to learn from one another. It establishes teacher expectations for students' attention and participation by requiring that students think about and interact with all questions. The second activity encourages students to use questioning to discover the common attribute of a collection of items. The items may be revealed one at a time or all together. An exercise called "comparison circles" is an instructional technique based on the logic of Venn diagrams. Relationships among groups of objects in science and social studies are demonstrated to help students learn to classify objects according to common characteristics. Finally, the "guess box" uses a technique similar to "Twenty Questions." A mystery item is placed in a box and students must identify the item by gaining information through questioning. A list of prompts for the guess box activity is included. (MSE)