Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Successful Strategies in the Classroom Part 2

Just a few weeks ago, I posted a checklist of items to think about as our teachers approached their classrooms each day. Since that time, I have started a list of what I believe are ways to continue to improve instructional practices for our teachers and ultimately for our students based upon ongoing feedback. These items are in no particular order, but I thought that it was important to share some of the items that our teachers could and probably should be employing in the classroom. It is our desire that our teachers will be in a state of continuous improvement so we can provide the best education possible for our students. If you are a teacher, then I hope you find this list useful.

Relationships
  • Are you greeting students at the door EVERY day?
  • Are you having ongoing and consistent conversations with EVERY student that says “I care?”
  • Are you meeting students at the door as they leave EVERY day?
  • Are you gathering feedback from students on what makes this class enjoyable, boring, more fun, less fun, etc?
  • Do you ever embarrass students with your corrections OR your praise?
  • Knowing your students is as important as knowing your content.

Notetaking
  • Do your students really know how to take notes?
  • Have you considered spending time in class teaching students this skill?
  • Have you considered Cornell notetaking (see here for a visual on Cornell notetaking), collaborative note-taking in Google Docs (see here for instructions on collaborative notetaking), developing graphic organizers before OR after to reinforce note taking and tapping into other multiple intelligences in the process?
  • Do you provide them with outlines to structure their notetaking?
  • Do students understand that we communicate with words as they outline and words are simply abbreviated places that link to ideas (this is important for Cornell notetaking)? Henry Ward Beecher said, “All words are pegs to hang ideas on.”

Pop Quizzes
  • Do they provide feedback or are they used to punish?
  • They should not be used as a means to maintain discipline.
  • Better instruction is always better than control and compliance in the classroom.
  • Although students are quiet and controlled in the classroom, does the pop quiz act as it is intended...as a formative assessment tool?
  • Spend more time in your preparation and you will reap benefits in your classroom management.

Prior Knowledge
  • Are you accessing prior knowledge? Most units build on past units and moving to the next unit should not be a time to forget the last unit. Mention prior knowledge where possible. Give students what they need from the past unit demonstrating that they will need the old information in the current unit as you introduce new material.

Exit Tickets
  • Have you considered using exit tickets either on a slip of paper or in a Google form (see here for an idea) before students leave (or when they enter after doing the previous night’s homework)? This can include items that they are struggling with, having students state how it is relevant to their life, how current knowledge accesses prior knowledge, etc.

Confrontations
  • Are you letting students dictate your emotions to you?
  • Are you always in control of your emotions?
  • Are you staying calm?
  • Do you get quieter or louder during a confrontation?
  • Are you overreacting and escalating a minor situation into a major situation?
  • Are you avoiding the audience and the embarrassment associated with public confrontations by handling discipline in front of a student's’ peers?
  • The private is always better than the public. Put away your pride in tough situations.
  • Avoid threats that cheapen the discipline that is later given.

If you have ideas, then feel free to share them with me and I will collect those for a later post.