Great Teaching Observed!

           Through my classroom observations, I have come to notice that thoughtful teachers are always looking for new and engaging reading strategies to try on their students.  They understand the value in techniques that boost comprehension and keep students’ attention focused on the text.  Today I had the pleasure of helping facilitate one such reading strategy in an 8^th grade social studies class.  The class has been learning about the thirteen American Colonies and about events that led up to the Revolutionary War.  In today’s class, the students were preparing for a town hall meeting that will be held in class next week.  To prepare students for this activity, Students were put into pairs and were assigned a colonist to represent.  For example, There were four Loyalists ,five Neautralists, and four Patriots represented at the meeting.  Students were given background information on their famous Colonist but were challenged to think critically about how their Colonist would feel about various issues of their time. 

            Instead of simply instructing students to read their assigned section of the textbook and then answer their corresponding questions on a work sheet, the students were asked to whisper read to each other in their pairs.   When students “whisper read” to each other, the teacher intends that they take turns reading a paragraph at a time.   In this strategy, both students share a textbook and one student reads the first section of text while the other student reads the same section quietly, by “whispering” the words out loud.  Students and teachers like this strategy because it shares the workload between students and the other student remains engaged because they are whispering along with the reading.  After the students whisper read about three important British laws that were passed (The Proclamation of 1763, The Stamp Act, and the Quartering Act) students were asked to pick the law that they understood the best.  We then gave the students a small piece of scratch paper and challenged them to draw a cartoon sketch depicting the law that they chose.  They were told that they would only have three minutes to complete their drawing and that they should use as few words as possible.  While the teacher set his timer to three minutes, the students were almost bursting with excitement over the task.  In fact, many of the students sat pencil poised, anxiously waiting to hear the words “You may begin!” As the student sketched quickly, I walked around the room to observe their progress.  I was delighted to see how engaged they all were in this process.  Every student was on task and seemed to be trying their best.  Even the students, who proclaimed their inability to draw, put their insecurity aside and completed the task.  When the three minutes ended with a collective sign and groan of disappointment, the students were asked to turn an talk to their partner and take turns sharing about their drawing and explaining their thinking.  They were again timed and they had to talk for the full thirty seconds each.  Turn and talk techniques are wonderful because they allow each student the opportunity to share their ideas and their thinking out loud with a peer. 

 

 

                  Once students were finished with their partner sharing, The teacher asked two students for each of the three taxes to come to the front of the class to show and explain their drawings under the document camera.  Many students volunteered and the six that I noticed were chosen were picked because the teacher felt that they had struggled in other areas of learning and this was an opportunity to have them show off their skills and feel successful.  The class ended with a whole group discussion of the three imposed taxes, in which the students were asked to put themselves in the position of both Patriot and Loyalist.  This was a perfect ending to the lesson as it encouraged students to put themselves in the shoes of others.  What I will take away from this experience is the teacher’s thoughtful planning of this lesson and the student’s engagement and positive response to the reading strategy.       

~ Christy