Everyday Miracles

Happy Holidays Everyone! This article, taken from kinderconfidential, is a great reminder of the little things worth celebrating. Enjoy!

Everyday Miracles

DECEMBER 9, 2015 ~ KRISTIMRAZ

I was biking home from work today when I passed a group of tourists on the Queensboro bridge. I cross the Queensboro bridge twice a day, which means this year alone I have crossed it 110 times. Usually I zone a bit, consider what I should make for dinner, reflect on the day, curse the incline, feel morally superior to the drivers, and before I know it, it is long behind me.

The tourists were pointing and taking a pictures of something behind me and I thought, “Is something on fire? Was there an accident?” Because why on earth would this group of 4 people, clutching a New York guidebook, be stopped on this blustery, trafficky bridge? I turned as I rode to look, and what did I see?

Nothing.

Well, to clarify, nothing that I have not seen at least 110 times. A view of the city over the river, a fading sun glancing off glass, all framed by the beams of the bridge. It wasn’t until I saw the tourist reaction that I realized the miracle of this thing that I have come to regard as commonplace. And then it struck me, I need to become a tourist in my own life.

Everyday miracles can just become everyday, and nowhere is this more true than in the classroom. Just because I have seen dozens of children learn to zip their coats, does not mean that I shouldn’t feel THIS child’s excitement at doing it for the first time today. Nor, should the many many holiday breaks I have lived through mean I can’t feel the near hysterical anticipation that a child feels because this is her FIFTH Christmas EVER. I think the key to staying vibrant and connected to children is to never stop realizing that you are tourists in their life. To that end, nor should we cease to become tourists in our own.

I am not the first to suggest that wonder is a critical aspect of instruction, there are many many people who write wisely about wonder, curiosity, and joy: Georgia Heard, Kristin Ziemke, Steph Harvey, everything Reggio ever, and I urge you to chase down their work and read it.

I also urge you to go read this post on gratitude, and how talking about the good parts of your day can change your mind, and your life http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2012/08/here-are-the-things-that-are-proven-to-make-y/

Since reading this post, we close out our classroom day with a gratitude circle, but even so I missed the big idea: the best thing is not synonymous with the biggest thing- sometimes it is watching a child learn to zip, loving the lunch you packed for school, or remembering that you love the place where you live.

The best thing that happened to me today was realizing all the little things I had forgotten could be best things.

Happy Holidays!

Is positive thinking enough?

Let’s apply positive thinking to school. When my writing unit is done, I “love” to grade all those papers. (Yeah, you’re thinking the same thing I am…there are tons of other things I would rather do.) I really do like to see the growth my students have made. If only it wasn’t so time consuming. The reality is that I will procrastinate. Positive thinking is not enough.

My positive voice says “I will grade all the papers” and if I do “I will have less stress, and my students will have a greater benefit.” That’s when my pessimist side says “No, you will probably go home and let the couch take over.” But, this is where research can come to save the day.

Wish – What your goal is. (To get the papers graded.)

Outcome – What personal benefits you'll gain by accomplishing your goal. (Less stress and greater benefit to students.)

Obstacle – What factors may get in the way of your goal. (My couch)

Plan – How you will anticipate and overcome the obstacles, written as an “If (obstacle)/then (plan)” statement. (If the couch will stop me from working, I will sit at the kitchen table until I’m done.)

The process is based on the research of Gabriele Oettingen and her team, who have found consistent benefits in a variety of participants trained in this strategy. Oettingen and her peeps use WOOP as an acronym.

It may seem simple, but could be just what we need to get through the mundane parts of the job.

Start Wooping Up your life today!

Try it in the classroom too:

• 1    Homework Planning: before your students leave have them design a WOOP.
• 2   Classroom Management: WOOP what “success” will look like with a problem student.
• 3   Challenging Work: before students engage in challenging work, WOOP in anticipation of the challenge.

Exit Tickets Can Encourage Student Reflection

The idea for this post comes from Leanne Riordan, who teaches at Holabird Academy in Baltimore.  She shares some ideas for exit tickets that her colleagues use to include a level of self-monitoring and self-reflection. 

She writes:

I’d like to chime in to the exit ticket conversation with an idea to encourage student reflection and develop metacognition in conjunction with the exit ticket. In my school I’ve noticed some teachers have the students turn their exit tickets into bins, based on the students’ own perception of their understanding. One bin might be something like “I’ve got this!” while another is labeled “More practice please.” In between could be “I need some help” or “I’m almost there.”

In addition to helping the students be more mindful about their outcomes at the end of the lesson, I think these piles can also help with buy-in later when you pull a group for corrective teaching. The teacher should reference that the students in the small group did not answer correctly, and they also asked for help. Or, if most of the class said they needed help, the teacher could open the next lesson with a connection to this purpose.  Something like, “I noticed that most of the class asked for more help with __, so we are going to spend 10 minutes going over it again, in a different way that will help you understand it better.”

I also think it would be interesting to compare how the students rated their understanding vs. their actual performance.  Are some overconfident, or not confident enough?  Are the students able to correctly assess their level of knowledge or ability to problem solve? How do the student-created piles compare to the scored piles?

I am attaching a photo example from Erika Savage’s third grade classroom.

Exit tickets become a tool to help teachers foster conversations with their students and get a clear understanding between students' perceptions of their own mastery and what the exit tickets show. You can also follow up with process-oriented diagnostic questions for students who report they need more help (“WHY do you think you did not get it the first time? Were you actively listening? Did you take careful notes? Can I see them?” Etc.)

- See more at: http://teachlikeachampion.com/blog/exit-tickets-encourage-self-reflection/

Teaching with the Joy Factor

 Joy Factor is one of the most popular techniques in Teach Like a Champion.  Who doesn’t want to have fun while they (and their kids) work? Who doesn’t want to have their students feel the joy of learning?  But while it’s popular and positive, Joy Factor can be a surprisingly tricky thing to get just right. Here is an amazing video of North Star Academy’s Christina Fritz demonstrating Joy Factor with her second graders. - 

We’re calling the clip the “Skip Counting Pep Rally,” and in it, Christina nails three goals that are critical for bringing joy to the classroom:

1) It’s the servant:  Joy Factor is best when it “serves” the learning objectives of your lesson(s). That is, we can all think of lots of ways to have fun with a group of kids- the question is, how much can you make the fun serve the most important learning goals?  Christina’s “Skip Counting Pep Rally” is all about the math at the core of her lesson.

2) It needs a faucet: When the fun gets loud or silly, you gotta be able, as one teacher put it, to “turn it on and turn it off….” like a faucet.  Nothing is less fun than an activity that’s supposed to be fun but that quickly spirals out of control.  You saying something like, “Alright, heads down on desks.  If that’s how we have fun in this classroom we just won’t do it anymore…” is no way for your intended moment of joy to end.  So having systems to manage the energy level and to “turn it on and turn it off” is critical.  Notice how much fun Christina’s kids are having, AND how she has them “lock it up” and go briefly back to a learner’s position mid-way through to keep the necessary structure in place.

3) It’s whistling (while you work). Saying, “If we work hard we’ll play a game” (or have some free time, etc) sends the message that fun is the antidote to hard work.”  That’s a pretty mixed message. Much better is to message that we often have fun at our work and that work can be fun.  You don’t need the volume up to know that Christina’s kids got that message.  

By the way, it’s important to note that, as the text on the video implies, Christina’s kids work on their skip counting in the middle of a long and rigorous lesson with a ton of independent work and discussion…

Christina’s classroom isn’t all singing and chanting; it’s the change of pace that makes the skip counting fun.

…in other words, her whole class doesn’t look this way; it’s the exclamation mark at the end of a sentence, the fun little dance step half-way through your walk to school. There’s no time like the present for bringing the Joy Factor to your classroom, especially when you’ve got a model as sharp as Christina’s to show you how.

“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

http://teachlikeachampion.com/blog/joy-factor-christina-fritz-skip-counting-pep-rally/

Blog post by Doug Lemov (http://teachlikeachampion.com/blog/)

Every Kid Needs a Champion

We may not agree with everything that is happening in education but, “We Teach Anyway! That’s what we do. Teaching and learning should bring joy!"

"How powerful would our world be if we had kids who were not afraid to take risks, who were not afraid to think, and who had a champion? Every child deserves a champion. An adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connections, and insists that they become the best they can possibly be.”

Please take time to watch this video. You will hear the powerful words from the quote above.

Thank you for being a champion in your classrooms!

Conferencing with Jennifer Serravalo

Conferencing is the "heart" of your reading block and writer's workshop time. As we conference with students, we want to find what the students are doing well along with determining if their goals meet their needs. As you watch Jennifer Serravallo, look for these things.

• how she allows the student time to talk about the book
• how she gives a compliment to the student about something they are doing well
• how she teaches with examples and has the student practice with her
• how she links the teaching point to the future

An excerpt of Jen Serravallo's Digital Campus course Teaching Reading in Small Groups.
Watch this conference with author Jen Serravallo and fourth grader Julienne, who has just finished her book. 

11 Alternatives to "Round Robin" (and "Popcorn") Reading

By Todd Finley

Round Robin Reading (RRR) has been a classroom staple for over 200 years and an activity that over half of K-8 teachers report using in one of its many forms, such as Popcorn Reading. RRR's popularity endures, despite overwhelming criticism that the practice is ineffective for its stated purpose: enhancing fluency, word decoding, and comprehension. Cecile Somme echoes that perspective in Popcorn Reading: The Need to Encourage Reflective Practice: "Popcorn reading is one of the sure-fire ways to get kids who are already hesitant about reading to really hate reading."

Facts About Round Robin Reading

In RRR, students read orally from a common text, one child after another, while the rest of the class follows along in their copies of the text. Several spinoffs of the technique offer negligible advantages over RRR, if any. They simply differ in how the reading transition occurs:

·        Popcorn Reading: A student reads orally for a time, and then calls out "popcorn" before selecting another student in class to read.

·        Combat Reading: A kid nominates a classmate to read in the attempt to catch a peer off task, explains Gwynne Ash and Melanie Kuhn in their chapter of Fluency Instruction: Research-Based Best Practices (PDF, 177KB).

·        Popsicle Stick Reading: Student names are written on Popsicle sticks and placed in a can. The learner whose name is drawn reads next.

·        Touch Go Reading: As described by Professor Cecile Somme, the instructor taps a child when it's his or her turn to read.

Of the thirty-odd studies and articles I've consumed on the subject, only one graduate research paper claimed a benefit to RRR or its variations, stating tepidly that perhaps RRR isn't as awful as everyone says. Katherine Hilden and Jennifer Jones' criticism is unmitigated: “We know of no research evidence that supports the claim that RRR actually contributes to students becoming better readers, either in terms of their fluency or comprehension." (PDF, 271KB)

Why all the harshitude? Because Round Robin Reading . . .

·        Stigmatizes poor readers. Imagine the terror that English-language learners and struggling readers face when made to read in front of an entire class.

·        Weakens comprehension. Listening to a peer orally read too slowly, too fast, or too haltingly weakens learners' comprehension -- a problem exacerbated by turn-taking interruptions. (PDF, 177KB)

·        Sabotages fluency and pronunciation. Struggling readers model poor fluency skills and pronunciation. When instructors correct errors, fluency is further compromised.

To be clear, oral reading does improve fluency, comprehension and word recognition (though silent/independent reading should occur far more frequently as students advance into the later grades). Fortunately, other oral reading activities offer significant advantages over RRR and its cousins. As you'll see in the list below, many of them share similar features.

11 Better Approaches

1. Choral Reading

The teacher and class read a passage aloud together, minimizing struggling readers' public exposure. In a 2011 study of over a hundred sixth graders (PDF, 232KB), David Paige found that 16 minutes of whole-class choral reading per week enhanced decoding and fluency. In another version, every time the instructor omits a word during her oral reading, students say the word all together.

2. Partner Reading

Two-person student teams alternate reading aloud, switching each time there is a new paragraph. Or they can read each section at the same time.

3. PALS

The Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) exercises pair strong and weak readers who take turns reading, re-reading, and retelling. (PDF, 177KB)

4. Silent Reading

For added scaffolding, frontload silent individual reading with vocabulary instruction, a plot overview, an anticipation guide, or KWL+ activity.

5. Teacher Read Aloud

This activity, says Julie Adams of Adams Educational Consulting, is "perhaps one of the most effective methods for improving student fluency and comprehension, as the teacher is the expert in reading the text and models how a skilled reader reads using appropriate pacing and prosody (inflection)." Playing an audiobook achieves similar results.

6. Echo Reading

Students "echo" back what the teacher reads, mimicking her pacing and inflections.

7. Shared Reading/Modeling

By reading aloud while students follow along in their own books, theinstructor models fluency, pausing occasionally to demonstrate comprehension strategies. (PDF, 551KB)

8. The Crazy Professor Reading Game

Chris Biffle's Crazy Professor Reading Game video (start watching at 1:49) is more entertaining than home movies of Blue Ivy. To bring the text to life, students . . .

·        Read orally with hysterical enthusiasm

·        Reread with dramatic hand gestures

·        Partner up with a super-stoked question asker and answerer

·        Play "crazy professor" and "eager student" in a hyped-up overview of the text.

9. Buddy Reading

Kids practice orally reading a text in preparation for reading to an assigned buddy in an earlier grade.

10. Timed Repeat Readings

This activity can aid fluency, according to literacy professors Katherine Hilden and Jennifer Jones (PDF, 271KB). After an instructor reads (with expression) a short text selection appropriate to students' reading level (90-95 percent accuracy), learners read the passage silently, then again loudly, quickly, and dynamically. Another kid graphs the times and errors so that children can track their growth.

11. FORI

With Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction (FORI), primary students read the same section of a text many times over the course of a week (PDF, 54KB). Here are the steps:

1.      The teacher reads aloud while students follow along in their books.

2.      Students echo read.

3.      Students choral read.

4.      Students partner read.

5.      The text is taken home if more practice is required, and extension activities can be integrated during the week.

I hope that the activities described above -- in addition to other well-regarded strategies, like reciprocal teaching, reader's theater, and radio reading -- can serve as simple replacements to Round Robin Reading in your classroom.

Ideas Provided By: Edutopia author Todd Finley

Best Practice in Reading and Writing

There are many ways to increase students' engagement in reading and writing. Harvey Daniels and Marilyn Bizar, the authors of "Teaching the Best Practice Way:  Methods That Matter, K-12," expressed good teaching as a continuum of improvement which involves moving away from ineffective practices and moving toward research-based "best practices." It is essential to revisit what we are doing in our classrooms often, so we can be sure that students are getting the most out of what they read and what they write. Below are a few things to think about as we reflect on our teaching. Ask yourselves these questions. If the answer is no, then that might be one place to think about reviewing and changing.

Reading

• Are we allowing students choice to pick their own books to read?
• Are we exposing students to a wide range of rich literature during the day? 
• Are we modeling and discussing our own thinking during reading?
• Are we giving the students time to collaborate and share their thinking about books?

Writing

• Are we increasing class time spent on writing original pieces and giving students real purposes for writing?
• Are we modeling our own writing along with the students and demonstrating the processes we want them to do?
• Are we increasing the study of grammar and mechanics in context, at the editing stage, and as items are needed?
• Are you allowing students the opportunity to write across the curriculum as a tool for learning?

Conferring and Goal Setting

Why conferences and goals?

Why do we need to conference and set individual goals?

“…the more effective classrooms have a distribution of whole-class, small-group, and side-by-side instruction. The more whole-class teaching offered, the lower the academic achievement in any school.” (The CAFÉ book, pg 9-10)

In other words, the more you get down to working with individuals, the higher your classroom achievement.

“In order for learners to develop heuristic, or goal-directed, strategies, they must have clear goals.” (The CAFÉ book, pg 10)

In other words, each student deserves goals that fits their needs.

Creating Individual Reading Goals

Individual goals for students should be discovered while benchmarking.

·    Look for the most common error.

·    Identify a goal; comprehension, accuracy, fluency, or vocabulary

·    Identify a specific skill based on the goal; inferring, synthesis…

·    Find specific strategies to accomplish the goal.

Once you decide what goal the student will be working on, based on the benchmarking, hold a “goal-setting conference.” During this conference refer back to the benchmark, letting the student see their most common errors. You may point out the error, or see what the student notices on their own. Sometimes the student will know what to work on and when the student sets their goal it is more motivating for them to work on it. This conference will take longer.

It is important to not spend too much time teaching to allow for guided practice while in the conference. Students are often ready to start as soon as you tell them the strategy. First attempts by students should be guided, prompted, coached, and given feedback by the teacher. A typical conference should take 2 minutes.

Remember, don’t stick with the skills for too long. If the touch points are in the 3 to 4 range for 3 conferences in a row, it is time to move on. Also, if the touch points are in the 1 to 2 range for more than a few weeks it is time to change something. Change the strategy, the visual, or the way it is being taught in some way.

Selecting Similar Students for Strategy Groups

Do you plan to give multiple students the same strategy? Then it may be time for a strategy group. These groups are typically made of 2 to 5 students. The focus of the time together is introducing and working on strategies, and guided practice in order to reach their goal. A strategy group meeting may last about 5 minutes.

Make A Plan- Make it Consistent

Let’s review the corporation guidelines for Pensieve:

Teachers will conduct reading conferences with students continuously and frequently using the following chart as guidance.

Above Grade Level Readers	At or Near Grade Level Readers	Below Grade Level Readers
At Least Once Per Every Week	At Least Twice Per Week	At Least Three Times per Week

In order to reach this goal, you need to make a plan. Schedules can be extremely helpful in meeting with all your students. The Sisters schedule as they go, if this system is working for you then please continue to use it. If you are the type of person who needs more control, a set weekly schedule may be best for you.

For many classes, strategy groups will need to be put in place to meet the needs of the class. These small, strategy groups count as a conference with the student. If you need help creating groups in Pensieve please let your instructional coach know and we will set a meeting with you.

Helpful Tips

How do I get it all done?

If you behavior plan in your room is working, your students are already independent. Once students are independent, you have more time to get out and conference.

During the reading block, whole class mini-lessons must remain short. Remember that students don’t get better in the lesson, they get better with practice. Here is some review information from an earlier post on brain research:

·        Four to eight minutes of content when you are teaching items which students have less background knowledge and the complexity is greater.

·        Eight to fifteen minutes of content when teaching items in which the students have greater background knowledge and less complexity.

·        Longer than fifteen minutes of content is proven to be ineffective.

How do I show interest in the students when I am busy with the computer/Pensieve account?

Before walking over to a student, take a minute; log into your account, read the last conference information you have with the student, get your goal and strategy filled in, then walk over to the student. As soon as you sit down you should be ready to go. Don’t interrupt the student and then make them wait on you. During your conference, engage the student(s), state the strategy they will use, guide their practice, and set a goal for the next meeting. When the conference is over, tell the student you will sit with them for another minute while they practice. During this minute, type your notes from the conference, pull up the next student you will be meeting with, read the notes from the last conference, fill in the goal and strategy, then walk over to the student. If you use this method you will be engaged with the student you are with and prepared for the next student when you arrive.

How do I keep all the goals straight?

To better manage the goals in the classroom, visual reminders for individuals and strategy groups can be made. This will help remind individuals to continue to work on their own when the teacher is not with them. It can also help visitors to the room know what each student’s goal is.

On-Demand Reading and Writing

On Demand Reading and Writing--It's real world.

Think about the type of writing you do every day. Much of what we do is short on-demand types of reading and writing: surfing the Internet, emails, notes, teacher newsletters, teacher lessons, etc. Students need opportunities to read and write on-demand as much as possible.

It's not all stories--It's unique formats.

Students will see both literature and informational texts on the typical reading test. To help students learn about and understand different formats, consider routinely exposing students to a variety of text types in both fiction and nonfiction on a routine basis.

It's not just a text--It's multiple texts.

Along with varying the text types, you will need to ask your students to read multiple texts in one sitting. This, again, is a real-world reader habit. Here is an example of what we might do with multiple texts. When a snow storm comes to our area, we might:

• View a weather report on television.
• Surf the Internet for the latest information. 
• Read the newspaper.

We tend to seek information from multiple texts about a single topic, and we do this all in one sitting, so it is important for students to have these experience routinely in the classroom.

The traits are important--It's Ideas and Organization

For on-demand writing, students have to start and finish their written responses to standardized prompts/questions all in a single draft. For that reason, the traits of Ideas and Organization are essential for students to practice when completing on-demand writing.

The students are expected to write with coherence and cohesiveness. "Coherence," meaning that it's on topic, well thought out, and easy to follow. "Cohesive," meaning that it's complete, with all parts of the prompt addressed in a beginning, middle, and end. The traits of Ideas and Organization encompass these expectations. If students are strong with their Ideas and Organization traits, they will perform better on standardized writing prompts and with other similar writing tasks.

Since on-demand writing doesn't allow time for major revision and editing, students may not always have time to incorporate the traits of voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions completely. Their first priority should be to get their ideas down with strong organization then go back and for revision and editing when time allows. 

It's a yearlong expectation.

If we truly believe that on-demand reading and writing skills are essential for real-world literacy, then weaving opportunities for on-demand activities is a must during the entire school year.

(Smekens, 2015)

Instructional Charts

“Instructional charts may not be rocket science, but they use brain science to create high-impact aids for young readers, writers, mathematicians, scientists, and social scientists.” “Charts take abstract content and represent it in a concrete way to support independence.” (Kristine Mraz and Marjorie Martinelli; ChartChums)

A Chart Should:

• Reflect instruction by stating explicit strategies; process, routine, concept, or repertoire
•  Show the process of how to do something
• Give examples (student work is best)

The Heading Should:

•         Be written large and legibly
•         Invite thinkers in
•         Name a big skill
•         Set students up for utilizing the chart
•         Grab the reader’s attention with a strong statement or a question

The Language Should:

•         Be appropriate for the grade level
•         Use less to get the point across

The Drawings Should:

•         Be simple
•          Communicate the information (especially for young students)
•         Define new concepts or new words
•           Make the chart engaging and enhance its meaning
•       Photography and Clip Art can also be used

Remember that color coding can help items stick in the memory making the strategies clear, and distinct.

Think About Your Lessons: "Start With Why"

Think about your lessons. Think about one that the students were engaged and excited about learning. These are the lessons that remind you why you chose education as your profession. Educators are always trying to find a way to help their students connect to lessons.

We often look at the learning styles, engagement strategies, and classroom modifications to help. We try the latest new curriculum or find a new inspiring idea from another teacher. We sometimes find that despite out efforts students can be distracted or just going through the motions. How can educators solve this problem?

The answer may be to think about Simon Sinek's principals of the Golden Circle. Although the Golden Circle refers to the marketing world, it can also be applied to education. Mr. Sinek explains that the inside of the circle is the WHY portion. This portion is the process of our Limbic brain that control emotion and feeling (why we do things). The next circle is the HOW. This section is made up of the decisions that control our ability to get things done. The outside circle is the WHAT section. In this section what we do is controlled by the Neocortex and involves rational thought. This information helps educators think about what motivates students' decision making. If we can tap into the part of the brain that makes decisions, we can get our students to find a need to be a part of what is happening in the classroom. Teachers need to give students a reason to participate. Many times as educators we go about teaching starting with the outside of the circle and work inward, rather than starting with the inner part of the circle, the WHY.

In order for teachers to create this in your classrooms, we need to stay focused on WHY the lesson or content is so important. Evaluate the purpose of your lesson. How does the lesson bring them to WHY they are learning. Students will begin to take charge of their own learning, because they understand WHY it is important, HOW it needs to be completed, and WHAT the results should look like.

Stay Positive

Words we use can shape the world of the classroom, and the future of a child. Think of words as lenses, and the way you use words as a way that changes the lenses. New worlds can be opened to students just by choosing positive lenses.

Which do you believe; the ways of the world are fixed and unchangeable or dynamic and pliable?

The way we teach can make students feel that all things are fixed; their future, ability, IQ, personality traits. All can be viewed as fixed competences. Kids in the fixed frame fear making errors, or taking on new challenges in order to protect themselves and their fixed path. When we judge students we can push them into the fixed frame.

We move kids to a more dynamic change by showing that things can change. We need to show them processes. Each process we teach them helps them to achieve, making the process of learning available to all. When we articulate what learners do, all students can access the process of learning. Then, students take power in their own learning.

Next time you are working with your class, think about your words. You might try to say things like:

-I like the way you figured that out, have you ever thought…

-How did you figure that out?

- What problems did you come across?

-How are you planning to go about fixing the problems?

-Which part are you sure about and which part are you unsure about?

-Why did you make that choice?

Also, use the word “we” as often as possible, to give ownership of the thinking happening in the room back to the class and the students.

Based on Opening Minds and Choice Words by Peter Johnston

Do You Have a Student Centered Classroom?

One best practice to think about is having a student-centered classroom. With all of the 21st-century learning happening in your rooms, it is important to consider where you are with creating a classroom learning space that allows for students to have a voice, to interact frequently with other classmates, and to make choices about their learning.

Here are some questions for you to think about to see if you are providing a learning environment that is student-centered.

• Do you have ways that the students feel respected and feel part of the classroom?
• Do students have opportunities to make decisions in the classroom?
• Do they have choices with their learning?
• How often do you check for understanding with the students and adjust your instruction?
• How are your desks arranged? Do the students have multiple opportunities for students to share with other students?
• How much direct instruction are you giving versus facilitating their learning?

In a student-centered classroom it is important to allow your students to think, explore, try out, and practice new learning with some teacher directed instruction and coaching. Students tend to learn and retain more when they construct new meaning about novice concepts and topics independently, and when collaborating with others.

Think about your classroom. How student-centered is your classroom?