I teach 1st grade and alot of my time is spent trying to get my kids to relate what they are reading to things that they are already familiar with. Many teachers typically use the KWL chart for brainstorming before the study of a topic. So I thought that doing a workshop on 3 new ways to elicit prior knowledge from children, found in the Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning, would be helpful. The first strategy is called LINK and it is a student directed discussion about the topic in which a target word or cue is written in the middle of board and students are given 3 minutes to come up with as many associations as they can with the word. Everyone gets to share without comment from the teacher or other students. The second part involves the students asking one another about their words and the the third part is having the students without looking at the brainstorming write down what they have learned about the topic through discussion. The second strategy is List-Group-Label and is similar to the LINK except that after students have come up with associations they work in teams to group together the words and finally label each group. The last strategy is alphabet brainstorming and the student is provided a copy of a grid with each letter of the alphabet. They work alone or with a group to write down related words to a topic for each letter of the alphabet. They are given a time period and ask to fill in as many as they can. Afterwards everyone shares and justifies their answers. During the workshop the teachers would be involved in these three techniques to see how they work in the classroom.