'Means of Participation': First is a series of posts on common opportunities to build rigor
Great teachers are always seeking to make their classrooms as rigorous as possible. Over the next three days, I’ll be sharing thoughts about three ‘common opportunities’ –things I see in place when I observe great classrooms that can often make a big difference—quickly—in good ones.
Common Opportunity #1: Improve the rigor of your classrooms by defining the means of participation you want, every time you ask a question.
Lots of times I’ll see a teacher ask a question and not specify to her students how she wants them to answer. Is this a raise-your-hands question? A call-and-response? A just-speak-aloud if you think you have it? A follow-up to the kid who just spoke? Over time this lack of clarity usually devolves into a situation of benign calling out. Kids interested in answering or trying to please the teacher call out answers.
This isn’t wrong on their part because the teacher hasn’t asked them not to, but their eagerness is definitely non-productive. When you don’t control the means of participation students use, you can’t use Wait Time for example, as Maggie Johnson does in this clip. Teachers like Maggie have built a system where kids know how they are expected to participate and this lets them manage time so students have time to think and develop their answers when necessary. This in turn and ensures that the kids who like to take their time and think a little more slowly—which isn’t necessarily worse—also get to play.
But there are more difficulties to a classroom where the expected means of participation is unclear.
You also can’t cold call and direct a question to a specific student, say. So participation is inherently asymmetrical—some kids calling out constantly; others not at all—and you have no way to remedy it. By the time you say, “Asha what do you think?” someone has already answered.
Read the rest of this post here: https://teachlikeachampion.com/blog/common-opportunities-build-rigor-means-participation/
School system leader with over 2 decades of serving within the 16th largest district in the United States
7 年Expectation clarity is key in building classroom culture. Students can not be expected to do what they have not been taught. Academic objectives and standards are posted, verbalized and assessed. How often are behavioral expectations explicitly defined, modeled, practiced and assessed? "I do; we do;you do" goes a long way in supporting BOTH academic and social emotional learning.