A perennial challenge in school is presenting information in ways that match the needs and interests of large groups of children. There are many successful ways to do this, but there will be times when some are more invested and interested than others.
That has happened during the stream of explicit teaching lessons I've presented in the past few days. Those lessons have essential content for all students, and while the concepts may seem too easy to some, I know it's essential to review the language, rules, patterns, and relationships related to that information. I know that revisiting information helps students to make important connections even if the lessons seem too-easy for some. That's a hard concept to relay to a child who wants to rush ahead and get it done. There's always countless challenges that these students can engage with, but often in the younger grades, and perhaps the older grades too, children don't have the independence or drive to tackle a challenging project or pursuit on their own. Over time what has truly separated the seemingly gifted children from those who are very successful is that independent drive, will to challenge oneself, and pursuit of questions, exploration, and learning in its truest sense. All children can get to that place in time with the right coaching and opportunity, and I've seen many students who were resistant to those challenges in fifth grade grow up to achieve in extraordinary ways.
Now one distanced from the classroom may view a lesson when this kind of challenge exists as one with not enough differentiation, but after teaching as long as I have, I know that differentiation doesn't always work for multiple reasons including time, need for review, focus on teamwork, and more.
Today the stream of explicit teaching continues as students and I visit a number of concepts related to multiplication, in a sense this stream is reviewing multiplication concepts, properties, and patterns introduced throughout the previous grades as a way of solidifying students' collective knowledge about multiplication including the language, multiple algorithms, problem solving strategies, estimation equations, algebraic equations, and more. This time of bringing the learning together in ways that matter will help us to move forward together and in differentiated ways in the new year. Onward.
