Yesterday at the staff meeting, an AP assigned a "learning experience" to all of the teachers. "Okay, it's homework, but we're calling it a learning experience so it doesn't sound like homework," she admitted. The assignment? Write about what you'll do, bell to bell, on a typical day in your classroom.
It's hard to give just one answer to this question, because what I'll do in my classroom can differ drastically depending on our unit of study, the students' needs, and the format of my lessons. This year we'll engage in book clubs, meet with writing partners to craft and revise essays, use the laptops to write reflection blogs, read and write poetry, have a class "campfire," and keep online portfolios of writing samples and projects. But I suppose even though the meat of each lesson and the way it's served will change, a few procedures will provide the framework for each day's lesson. Consistent Framework for Class 1. Warm Up: The warm-up might be a grammar exercise, a creative writing prompt, or a question about what we’re currently learning. It's aim is to access prior knowledge about the day's material. Students will label the title of the warm-up and the date in their daybooks and start the warm-up at the beginning of class. 2. Objective-based: The objective for each day's lesson will be on the whiteboard and students will know what they're focused on learning that day. 3. HEART of the lesson 4. Exit Ticket: "We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience." -John Dewey Students will reflect on their learning daily. This might take the form of a "great American one sentence summary" of the lesson written in a student's daybook, answering a question on the way out the door, or submitting a question about the lesson to me via a google form. Moving past the daily routine, I’m really eager to apply what I’m learning in my grad classes in my classroom this year. A few changes that I will institute include giving my students more autonomy, writing a blog, and having my students reflect more on their learning through student blogs and online portfolios. I want to help my students become intrinsically motivated to learn this year. I hope to cultivate the type of classroom environment in which that is possible by making my students decision makers. They will have more personal freedom when it comes to literature selection and how they respond to what they read and how they respond to literature.
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Jill Zappiateacher, grad student, bibliophile Archives
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