Chapter 2 discusses the seven structures of Best Practice Teaching. I loved reading about these strategies and realizing how many of them are already in place in our classrooms and are already considered "best practice" at NES. Look at the list below -
1. Gradual Release
2. Classroom Workshop
3. Strategic Thinking
4. Collaborative Activities
5. Integrative Units
6. Representing to Learn
7. Formative-Reflective Assessment
Looking at this list also helped me make a "priority list" of areas we need to work on. Which of these practices do you feel like will be your top priority in your classroom when school starts back? After reading about each one, which did you feel brought about the most urgency/desire to make changes in that area? Choose one or two and share your thoughts.
I see a lot of these structures already being used at our school! Integrative units will definitely be a focus this year as we begin using the ELA units as well as the units that are mapped out for math. I also see a lot of workshop model teaching in our school as well. The three practices I want to focus on incorporating and improving in my classroom this year are gradual release, strategic thinking, and collaborative activities. Last year in first grade, we were so afraid to gradually release our students and allow them to take full responsibility for their work. I myself was so afraid of failing my students who were already performing so far below grade level. I felt I needed to "hand hold" a little more with this group because of their academic performance, especially in reading. This year I want to really focus from the beginning of the year on allowing my students to take responsibility for their learning. I want to really focus on getting through all 4 steps of the gradual release, instead of just the first 3 which I felt I did quite often last year. I want my students to see that they can do it, and if they do fail I will use that experience as an opportunity to reteach. Collaborative activities can be quite difficult in first grade due to maturity, but I really want to focus on doing all of the extra planning and setting up to ensure that my students can collaboratively work productively and I want to add more collaborative opportunities this year. I also loved reading about strategic thinking and found the section about text coding to be really beneficial because I can see this being used easily with my first graders. I love the different symbols they give for students to use as they read. This would be effective to use even for my students who are not strong writers because students simply draw symbols on post-it notes as they read. I also thought this was a great way to keep students accountable for their own learning which is part of gradual release. This would be a great activity for independent reading time during reading workshop. Students could use text coding while reading their books and then the class could come together and discuss different symbols students used while reading as a way of reflection on their work. I really enjoyed this chapter and can't wait to use these practices in my classroom this coming school year!
ReplyDeleteI loved how this chapter gave real-world examples of how to implement the seven structures. What I loved even more was the fact that I could envision many of these structures happening throughout our classrooms! Our next steps, I believe, include bringing all of these structures to a point of true consistency in our building and optimal effectiveness. I've said this for years- we get so hung up on getting students ready for the "big test" that sometimes I think our really great teachers forget how to teach really great, meaningful lessons. I would love to see our teachers free themselves and design their instruction for the same purposes as these teachers we read about. I truly believe that if great teaching is going on and our students are the center of that teaching (instead of the test being the center), then our students will shine on any assessment they are given. So, my priority involves all seven structures and helping shift our emphasis from test-centered to student-centered. Now just to convince our district leaders.... :)
ReplyDeleteI also agree that I feel like NES is doing a really great job at already incorporating some of these strategies into the classroom. Courtney and Heather and some great thoughts from above. :) In response to Heather- I feel like it is EXTREMELY hard not to let the "big test" control my thoughts, plans, and efforts as a teacher. I feel like that's what everything is based on and there is so much at stake. It is hard to not let that stand in the way of doing some of the best practice examples shown in the book. I guess in one sense, I am sometimes scared to release control to students. I want to make sure- with everything in me- that they've "got it", that they understand it. This year I would like to practice more of the gradual release and giving students more responsibility for their learning. I have a HUGE desire to see the curriculum integrated throughout the content areas, especially with social studies and reading. I love what the book had to say about this- that students get overwhelmed with so many different topics thrown at them all the time throughout the different content areas. I feel students would be more engaged if they were able to go bigger and deeper into what they were learning and it would make it more fun, too!
ReplyDeleteI underlined and doggy-eared so may pages in this chapter. I love all of the different reading and writing ideas as well as social studies. I loved everything in this chapter and was encouraged that we already incorporate so much of these practices into our classroom already! Go us!
This chapter reminded me so much of the things we have studied in That Workshop Book and Comprehension Connections. This chapter confirmed for me that we are on the right track and should continue pushing forward. I agree that we should not overwhelm the students with so many different topics and allow them more time to dive deeper into subjects of interest. The biggest thing that I want to focus on this upcoming year are collaborative activities. I feel that those activities will build such a unity in the classroom and a learned respect for other people's opinions and learning. I want to foster that freedom to learn without the fear to fail. The other big take away that I had were the representing to learning activities that I want to work on developing more this year. I want them to write and discuss more than just completing seat work. These activities will take my class back to the comprehension skills taught in the Comprehension Connections book. This chapter has really pumped me up for the fall!
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