The question formulation technique really clicked with me. I think I will definitely use this strategy in my classroom. I love that it hopefully gets all of the students talking and contributing in their individual groups, and I think it is an easy way to enable student-directed learning. I like that all students have an opportunity to have a question or thought to offer even those who may not have otherwise had prior knowledge to offer because they can feed off of the starting cue/prompt. I like that the teacher can get a picture of the students’ thought processes and use that as a starting place for the lesson, but the teacher still has control and can redirect the lesson back to the intended objectives if students don’t ask all of the intended questions.
I also found the Four Reads technique to be useful, and I think I would use this strategy with my students as well. I like how it seems sort of like a hybrid between a whole group and a small group activity. The whole class can do the same activity but with different materials that could be differentiated based on reading levels, abilities, or student interests. It seems like many teachers encourage students to highlight as they read to look for key pieces of information, but I think that this activity would create higher interest and would encourage a much closer read than highlighting alone. I like the four step, incremental approach where students dive a little deeper into the reading each time. I think this activity would help students that have trouble focusing because it provides very detailed instructions about what should be done during each read. Since each read has its own purpose, I don’t think students would get bored from reading the document. I can see how this process would really help to improve student comprehension.
I find it helpful that we are practicing so many strategies in our class. This past week I tried to implement the jigsaw puzzle strategy in my 2nd grade biography lesson on Helen Keller. I am sure that it could still use some adjustments, but I enjoyed the practice of trying to create a lesson plan from scratch by choosing a strategy and then looking for the materials that could be used to go along with the strategy. I am interested to hear your thoughts and feedback on the lesson plan.
It is helpful to hear the stories that Professor Bland shares about the real pressures that we will likely be faced with in our first teaching jobs – pressures to follow the County’s planned strategies and planned curriculum pacing guidance. It is helpful to hear that we should be confident in what we have learned as best practices and to not necessary give up on doing a strategy that we believe will work well just because someone else does not agree with it (i.e. like the 4th grade teacher who improved her students SOL test scores by teaching the social studies content in her Language Arts block). I love the idea of teaching with your heart or with what you know in your gut is best to help your students learn and develop a desire to learn more.