Greetings to everyone - I love reading your posts in this post-school year period!! It really helps to have a bit of time to reflect, doesn't it? I was particularly interested in the little gem of Jen's buried in a longer post. The idea of a Reflection Session being an opportunity for kids to "teach" each other has been especially effective in British schools - I observed it frequently while visiting schools in England and just love the way it dovetails with our notions of a gradual release of responsibility to kids. I think we have talked about the importance of getting kids to take full, independent responsibility for their use of a strategy, but haven't always acknowledged that often the best way to really learn something is to teach it to others - that doesn't necessarily mean the whole class or even one's own class (it could be younger kids, etc.), but I love what I've seen when kids teach.
I think it goes to your ongoing discussion about kids becoming more passive in upper elementary grades - I have seen that trend everywhere and am desperate (as a former intermediate teacher) to try to think of some "out of the box" ways to avoid it or correct it when it happens. To me, it never goes back to external rewards or the business as usual way of rewarding kids for learning - it should be about teaching kids through modeling, to find the intellectual inside themselves. Intellectual engagement is internally reinforcing, almost addictive, and I fear that in our zeal to fix things quickly, we've abandoned strategies that build long-term, intellectual engagement. I hope that Reflection Sessions can be a partial remedy to that problem and really look forward to hearing if/how you use them in the fall. Very best, ellin What would happen, I wonder, if we taught kids about the different types of questions...those that we ask as a teacher to assess what kids know...and those questions that lead the whole class and the teacher into deeper understanding...those open ended types of questions. And then, let the kids do some of the teaching, as Ellin proposes in her model for those reflection sessions. Couldn't you see the kids proposing some questions then and using those questions in follow up lessons? Maybe that would help change the current climate in ways that would help protect that natural curiosity and drive to learn. I need to get my strugglers more motivated...maybe this will help. _______________________________________________ Understand mailing list [email protected] http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/listinfo/understand_literacyworkshop.org
