Saturday, July 10, 2010
Chapter 6
Independent, self-directed learners....did I ever think about this while I was teaching? Did I consider my end goal to be anything other than having them master the expected skills within each subject? Did I desire for them to be independent problem solvers, directing their own learning and setting worthwhile goals for themselves? Yes, it does make sense to me, so why does this seem like a new idea? It has been so many years since I taught second grade. I am grateful for this opportunity to learn more about the literacy program our district is using, especially since it is different from what I taught. Scaffolded conversations, shared experiences, emphasis on frontloading are strategies that I did not use, but I hope to have the opportunity to try this one day. Giving the students purpose, choices, and even allowing them to have input on classroom procedures and behaviors would surely engage them more in their learning. And Regies ideas for setting up the classroom make sense too, having it organized, simple, even 'beautiful', and especially having appropriate resources they can turn to that are easily accessible. How awesome it would be to foster their independence and confidence in their ability to learn, so that they would all believe, "Bam! Nothing can stop me!"
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As mentioned in the previous post, I too considered the end goal to be mastering the skills and standards of 7th grade Social Studies, when I taught 5 years ago. I am interested to learn more about scaffolded conversations and frontloading strategies. It is refreshing to see an approach to teaching that directly involves the students active participation, in many aspects of the classroom and in turn builds a positive classroom environment. I like to have everything organzied and at times can be a bit rigid with color coding (yes,even while teaching 7th grade) and set procedures. Regie's idea about providing choice within a structure and having students help determine procedures and behavior provides a great combination of order in the classroom, yet allows the students to have some flexibility and ownership along the way. The section entitled "Teaching Students How to Self-Direct Small, Collaborative Groups is a great skill/strategy that will be useful throughout life.
ReplyDeleteI want my students to take ownership of their laboratory reading and writing. We struggle with this collectively since this is an entirely new genre to them. Usually we do labs and they turn in their first lab report only to get "slammed" on their writing. Then we do it again and again through out the year trying different labs until we reach near perfection. This is often a source of great frustration for all! Reading this chapter brought to mind things that I can do to improve...add more I DO at the beginning. If I find simple lab readings and focus on a section at a time have kids notice themselves the following three things: #1 The "person" is entirely removed from the writing. #2. The style is succinct and has brevity. #3. The Conclusion always loops around to the original hypothesis. If I front load my students with some "I DO" and "We Do" with regard to reading inquiry texts, they the "They Do" will become less frustrating.
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