Each day in school brings new stories, challenge, and discovery. This year's focus on succeeding on standards and promoting a vigorous, responsive, and engaging 21st century curriculum has resulted in somewhat routine blog posts (lists) of daily goals and events, yet the writing continues to serve as a catalyst, coach, and collaborator while I work towards meeting these goals each day.
Yesterday, the strategy of putting a child at the front of the room to model the skill with the computer and white board while I circulated around the room to help worked well. First, the child-teacher was psyched to have such an important role, and next, the other children were happy to have me available to help.
Also the combination of teaching a math skill and tech skill at the same time proved to be very successful. Teaching students how to make tables or charts with labeling, color coding, shading and draw tools not only resulted in great place value charts, but served to organize the information in children's brains with meaningful structure, a structure they'll more easily replicate and understand after making the models themselves.
Many children applied the skill of calculating on paper rather than just in their heads during a test--so many children try to skip that step in test taking only to write down the wrong answer. The process of writing down your work and checking it over seems simple, but it remains a learning point for young children.
The end of the day found students creating avatars for online share with multiple tools which they loved, online "mental push-ups" in the area of reading skill, and a time line discussion, short video and read aloud related to Letters from Rifka, a book which is serving to bring students to a place that they've never visited before.
In the evening, I quickly checked a number of online student learning sites and was able to write a few emails alerting families to students' practice needs. Many parents wrote back that they were grateful for the coaching.
Today will bring continued focus on online place value charts and models, more math tests, a writing exercise focused on adverbs, reading/writing meetings, music, and a focus on Native American culture of the Plains today and in the past. Each day is filled with a rich learning menu dependent on a child-friendly, responsive choreography that includes "choice, voice, and encouraging support." Onward.
