Ending Your Lesson Using Best Practices

 Coaches and administrators throughout the district have been going into classrooms for the yearly spring Data Collection, observing and recording best practices throughout the lesson.  If the observer is in the classroom at the end of the period, he/she looks for best practices in the lesson closure. The benefits of a strong lesson closure are well-documented and can be summarized as follows:  Closure summarizes the current lesson, allows for a check to see “did my kids get it,”and helps inform teacher planning for the next lesson.  Closure provides that critical bridge that brings sense and sequence to a series of lessons within a unit.

What do coaches and administrators look for in a lesson closure?

Coaches and administrators in Tahoma School District look for the following when they are in an end-of-lesson Data Collection:

If you have questions about what these look like in a lesson, please contact your  building coach or administrator.

What do others say about lesson closure?
Dr. Rod Lucero, Associate Professor in the School of Education and the Associate Director for the School of Teacher Education and Principal Preparation (STEPP) at Colorado State University, says that “closure activities also help define both your teaching agenda and the intended learning progression, weaving today's lesson with yesterday's while providing a look ahead at what tomorrow's will bring. As a deliberate part of your planning process, these activities summarize the current lesson, provide it context, and build anticipation for the next. Properly implemented, they will help you establish and maintain course momentum. Reinforcing what students have learned, closure activities also serve as an assessment tool with which to evaluate your students retention level—Did they get it?—as well as your own effectiveness.”   (http://teaching.colostate.edu/tips/tip.cfm?tipid=148).

How do lesson closures relate to TPEP?
Allowing a few minutes for a brief summary and student assessment and/or reflection not only meets Criteria 6.1, “Self-assessment of learning connected to the success criteria,” but also meets 6.3, “Formative Assessment Opportunities”; 6.5, “Student use of assessment data”; and 3.2, “Ownership of Learning.”  All of this for a brief time-out to synthesize the day’s learning!

Next week:  Fun ideas to liven up your closures

Two Don'ts and a Do: Asking questions to get students to analyze, make inferences, and generalize

Dylan Wiliam, author of Embedded Formative Assessment, cites a large research study by Ted Wragg  and colleagues that analyzed 1000 questions asked by teachers (79).  Of those 1000 questions, only 8% required students to analyze, make inferences, or generalize.

As we begin the slow slide towards summer, how can you improve your questioning AND keep your students more actively engaged?

DON’T OVERUSE I-R-E QUESTIONS.

Example

Teacher: “Who can tell me what a simile is? Mike?”

Student: “A simile compares two different things using ‘like’ or ‘as.’”

Teacher: “Good job.”

The sequence above is an I-R-E model, one that teachers should use only minimally. Why? In this model, the teacher is speaking  2/3 of the time, and only one student at a time can speak. The conversation is unnatural, one that seldom occurs in any other setting, and there is usually only one correct answer. Students quickly learn to play the game, to raise a hand to offer up the desired response, and to tune out until their name is called. a

DON’T OVERUSE THESE TYPES OF QUESTIONS:
Management questions (57% of questions in the Wragg study)
 Recall questions (33% in the Wragg study)

DO ASK QUESTIONS DESIGNED TO
Cause your students to think
Provide information for the teacher about what to do next

Would you like some CCS Reading Standard-aligned sentence starters to make your questions deeper and richer, force your kids to think, and prepare them for college and career at the same time?

Grade 6

Grade 7

Grade 8

Grades 9-10

Grades 11-12

Changing Your Practice Takes Practice

Do you ever feel like you want to change an aspect of your teaching practice but are frustrated when you try something new?

On average, a teacher needs to practice a new skill 20 times before mastering it. This number increases if the skill is exceptionally complex.

The biggest challenge in learning a new skill is not in learning it, but in implementation. For example, learning about riding a bicycle is much simpler than actually riding a bicycle.

Changing one's practice is further complicated by the fact that most teachers only change their underlying beliefs after they see success with students.  This creates a catch-22 situation where teachers often abandon a practice before they are able to master the skill and are see success with their students.

Give yourself grace when you try to implement a new practice that has been shown to enhance student learning.

Want to learn more?  Check out Allison Gulamhussein's "Teaching the Teachers" report published by the Center for Public Education.