Good Sunday morning everyone! Recently, as I've been reading articles and educational resources I've noticed the new emphasis in education on perseverance. Training students, and ourselves in some cases, to persevere through problems until a solution can be reached. Not relying on one strategy, but being open to many possibilities. As we grow in our beliefs and understandings about how students learn, we must be asking them to think outside of the box and attempt new and more complex thinking than ever before. This does not come naturally; and in sometimes in our strong desire for students to succeed we do too much of the thinking for them. As I was reflecting on this idea, I came up with the following list of things which we do to encourage perseverance in students.
A. Working to mastery, not simply corrected work and returning it.
B. Immediate, specific feedback on student work.
C. Conferencing with students about their mistakes, rather than just marking them wrong.
D. Model Drawing
E. Journaling
F. Allowing students to share their strategies and discuss them.
G. Supporting students through failed attempts by encouragement.
H. Positive reinforcement.
I. Trading in completion of many tasks in one class period for in depth discussion of just a few.
I'm sure there are many more strategies we use at UTE to help students persevere through problems. Please reflect on your classroom and the strategies you use on a regular basis.
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Mrs. Underwood's K students writing about sentences they had read together which included their spelling pattern for the week. Now that's rigor and perseverance! |
Mrs. Tomolonis' 5th grade students participate in daily model drawing. They try it on their own and then have a class discussion about different strategies. Immediate feedback is the key to this being such an effective daily practice. Great Job! |
Third attempt.............I feel that I do many of the techniques from the list. I believe the most important is immediate feedback which allows for mastery. When coming up with techniques not listed I must mention small group work and working with table mates during whole group. Table mates must agree on an answer and everyone must know how to explain the answer to the whole group when called on. This forces table mates to learn from one another and teach each other, since they never know who I am going to call on and I rarely call on students who knew it first.
ReplyDeleteApparently you can not blog from twitter link?????? Who knew?
DeleteYour immediate feedback makes a huge difference in student understanding. I can see your students growing daily through your entering into discussions with them about their growth! Thanks for your hard work and willingness to work toward continuous improvement for all!
DeleteIn kindetgarten we are doing several of the things listed already. We are doing writing journals several days a week now in which Michelle and I have our own journal that we write in front of them on the document camera; we are doing math journals now with drawings; we are doing daily read, write, and draw activities; and more. We are also working daily on the positive reinforcement (we are not masters yet, but we are trying).
ReplyDeleteYou are doing a great job! I can see the difference in your students! A true master teacher is one who never stops improving!
DeleteI use journal writing, do whats, and a sentence writing activity to encourage writing. I incorporate technology during calendar and center time. I have made a CHAMPS bulletin board with others help to remind me and my students about our behavior and positive reinforcement.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all you are doing Michelle. Your efforts are obvious in your student growth data!
DeleteI try to make immediate, specific feedback on students’ work. In trying to teach perseverance, I let the child know that I do not take one attempt and go on. One strategy I use is when the child is reading and comes to an unknown word; I have a little phrase I say, “When in doubt, finger out.” (They have to break the word down, with support if needed.) When a child is reading orally, I do not let the other children jump in and steal an opportunity from the child to learn how to learn. Often in reading aloud the child will miss a word and not even realize it. It is the other children’s job to watch for errors. When they see an error, they raise their hand. They are not allowed to say anything, this signals for the reader to try to self-correct the mistake.
ReplyDeleteIf a child is having difficulty figuring out a new word, I have that child show me how they might break it down. Just this week, I had a child who is very good at vocabulary run into a word they didn’t know. When I asked that child to break it down, he could not. I helped him and break it and he still couldn’t say the word parts. I decided to investigate further. Later, I pulled the child up to my desk and asked him to read some “chunks” (blends, etc.) He couldn’t do it. He totally relies on memorization of sight words. I now have him working on chunks as part of his homework. In third grade it starts to separate the sight word readers from those who are phonetic and sight word readers. As the children get older and run into more complex, multisyllabic words, they need strategies to attack them.
In fifth grade we feel that conferencing one on one with students in very beneficial. Finding the time is difficult, but we are working toward conferencing with students on their specific needs through our daily teacher center. This allows specific, immediate feedback that is based on individual student need. The idea behind this is to have a student folder to place work that needs improvement. During this teacher center we provide reteaching to meet each individual's learning needs. This is our goal to work on this more and improve on specific needs that impede growth.
ReplyDeleteChristie, Karen, and Marta
In the Math Intervention program, conferencing, immediate feedback and all that has been mentioned is the how and when of the program.
ReplyDeleteI think that positive reinforcement is the most important of all the encouraging strategies. I try to always stay positive with the kids. They need to know that you care and believe in them. If a child feels like they can’t do better, nothing successful can transpire.
ReplyDeleteIn 1st grade we do journal writing in math. Our students are having to write the problem, draw a picture along with a number bond, transfer number bond into a number sentence, solve the problem, and finally write how they solved the problem. This has been hard for our little ones. They can verbally tell how they arrived at the answer, but to write it on paper that has been the rigor for our little folks.
ReplyDeleteCandy and Peggy