A few weeks ago I, along with a few other teachers and administrators from my district, attended the first seminar of the Penn Literacy Network. While there the group focused on methods to improve student literacy in the classroom. The group was introduced to various strategies and was instructed that our first "assignment" was to try one of these strategies and record/journal how it went.
Classroom environment was something that our instructor focused heavily upon during our first meeting. He stressed the importance of pairing your students off and then bringing those pairs together into learning/discussion groups of four. Also, he continually explained that you want to make your classroom a learning center and that direction should come from at least three different sides of the classroom.
The instructor passed out a piece of literature that we were to read and then asked us to give a brief explanation of our thoughts which he would then expand upon as we continued to dissect the reading. I was intrigued; I had used strategies such as this before but had strayed from them through time. The session was enjoyable and I was truly interacting with the text. I kept asking myself why I had gotten away from this?
Needless to say the very next day I rearranged my classroom and had already chosen a piece of material to discuss/dissect with my classroom. This was not easy as the number of students I have when compared to square footage is rather large. Nevertheless, as my students wrote their thoughts as a part of the "do it now" activity I was careful to go around and give immediate feedback. This worked very well for most students. However, this is where things seemed to come apart at the seems.
The students' answers were silly at best; they did not take the reading or discussion seriously. I could not imagine having to complete this proverbial song and dance every day! As the day went on the discussions got better and naturally there were no problems in my honors classes.
What did I do wrong? Was the material bad? Was the question one that led to silly answers? Part of success is failure, as any innovator will tell you. Looks like it's back to the drawing board.
I find myself reading your post and laughing as I think 'oh haven't we all been there as we try something new and asked, what happened?' But, I must say I think your questions are all wrong. It is not what you did wrong or what was wrong with the materials, rather it is what do I do next and how to I further teach the students what I expect?
ReplyDeleteYour challenge to yourself was to implement a new technique, yes one that you admittedly used previously, but not one that you use daily or regularly for that matter. High-schoolers are just like little kids, they have to be taught and then practice. Clearly, your classroom has well defined expectations and you have set the stage from day 1 with your students. That is evident in the fact that they were active participants in this technique and that by your own account it 'worked well for most students.'
I think you are right in line with this and your classroom is probably well ahead of most. Your students understand you, so the next step is to keep at this technique. The foundation is there, probably due to how you run your class on a regular basis, so now you continue building the foundation and expectation of the technique but also slowly turn in a focus on the answers. You begin to spend more time focusing the students on serious answers and helping drive their conversations, or re-steer when they are off track. Over time, and I'm willing to bet not a long time, you will see the technique come together with serious answers and conversations as well.
So, don't ask 'what did I do wrong,' rather ask, 'what will I try tomorrow?'
Your probably right. I'm working on a post now for something that I did yesterday with MUCH BETTER results!
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