Now I was by no means good at everything in school, but one area that was easy for me was reading. I loved reading and read all the time at home (and I mean, all the time). At school we would all learn reading together - 30 kids at once. I remember listening to kids struggle to sound out words from a book we were all reading together. It was torture - all I wanted to do was race ahead to see what happened next, but I couldn't because I could get called on to read at any time. It was painful.
This is the image I always hold in my head when I am planning my own lessons. I literally ask myself, Will this be painful for anyone?
Lately, I have felt the need to take this belief even further. I started reading about a school called Acton Academy based out of Austin. They do a lot of independent learning using technology. One of the many things I admire about this school is that kids are working at their own pace, and on things that they care about. People always work much harder when they have chosen their task.
I began working on ways to implement these ideas into my own classroom even though we are not yet a 1-1 school.
I started by organizing the resources in my room, so kids could have access to anything they needed to learn. That included games in plastic shoe boxes, office supplies in a central location, and a file cabinet organized for student use.
Finally, I turned one of our bulletin boards into our "Hero's Quest Board". The idea of the student as a hero is something I borrowed from Acton. We study cultures in third grade, so I put up paper continents and then printed out a picture of a famous place from each continent. I labeled each picture with one of the seven most important things we would be learning this trimester - writing paragraphs, information writing, answering questions about what we read, reading fluently, fractions, and two more I can't think of right now. I will post a picture of the board when I get back to school. As kids master concepts their names are put up on that part of the quest. By the end of the trimester, every name should be up on the board.
My room was ready for students to make choices and get learning, but were my students ready? After all, these are eight year old who had always been in a traditional classroom where the teacher tells you what to do, and you do it.
I needed one more piece to keep students accountable. I decided on the standards that we would be working on during the winter trimester and typed them up in kid friendly language.
Next, I made student planning sheets. Students pick the standard they are working toward meeting and right it in the learning target column. Then, they decide what they will do to work on that standard and write it in the activity column. After they have completed the activity, they write a reflection thinking about what they learned and how they worked.
Before I make copies of the sheet for the day I write the mini-lessons I will be teaching the entire class on each sheet. I keep it to less than four mini-lessons and try not to spend more than ten minutes talking for each mini-lesson.
After a week of using the sheets I found that I also wanted the kids to reflect on their behavior throughout the day to give mom and dad more information about what was happening at school. Also, my reminders to kids don't seem to change their behavior as fast as their own reflection on it. So, now on the back of each student planning page is a behavior page.
I am really happy with how these changes have affected my students and my classroom. I feel like I am making a difference every day because I am spending less time on classroom management and more time helping kids learn. Plus, the kids are motivated to master concepts, and that motivation is the key to success.
No comments:
Post a Comment