Teach For Independent,
Self-Directed Learners
I love what the little third grader said after a Regis residence. “My brain hurts from all the thinking because I never think, but now I’m getting smarter.” Later she even said that her brain felt bigger, and that she had knowledge in her head and that she felt great. Wow! She was a struggling reader too.
We need to quit fixing up all the writing for them. If you teach children to monitor and evaluate their own work and direct their revision process right from the start, they can shock you with what they are capable of. We want our students to be independent problem solvers directing their own learning and setting their own goals. We can't do it for them!
When reading this chapter, I was very interested in what Regis said about using scaffolded conversations. They are so powerful. I love how she did the thinking out loud while helping a student pick out a writing topic, also offering help developing the topic. I, too, like to jot or capture students’ ideas by putting them on sticky notes and attaching them to their paper. This paper trail will remind them that their ideas are important, and later it will encourage or remind the learner what to do. This record of their thinking will give them the courage to work independently.
I really enjoyed reading the part about teaching students to self-monitor and self evaluate. I love the part when Regis talked about even young readers can check their own work if we teach them how and provide the necessary support and expectations. I hope for all teachers to believe this. If we tell them what we expect and hold them to it, usually it will happen. I like the fact that Regis will not accept a paper at all that has not had the basic editing completed. She just hands it back to them. All students can do the basics of editing.
Preparing for testing is so important. Testing is a genre in itself and needs to be treated that way. As a third grade team, this year, we also rewrote the third grade writing rubric. We came up with great demonstrations to put in our frontloading lessons and let small groups practice with writing samples by noticing, talking, sharing, rereading, and explaining their thinking. We were so excited when our students finally took the writing test, because we felt they were much better prepared. A lot of frontloading, guided practice, group practice, celebrations and major hand holding are some of the ways we helped prepare our students for state testing.
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I agree with you Dianne, all children can monitor their work if we do a good job teaching them the process. We just have to make sure we don't do to much for them in the beginning and they become dependent on us. The optimal learning process is key especially if we want them to become independent learners.
ReplyDeleteThe one quote that I really speaks to me and I think really sums up this chapter was Regie's statement ," I believe the end goal of education must be to teach our students to be independent problem solvers who direct their own learning and set new, worthwhile goals."
ReplyDeleteI agree with this quote and using the OLM to achieve this goal. I also agree with Regie that we as educator must "teach with a sense of urgnecy" in order to further achieve this goal. Some days, due to whatever circumstances that may occur, our instructional time is cut and we are left needing every minute we can get. I am really going to focus hard on this quote this year to ensure that I am truly "teaching with a sense of urgency" and using every second of instructional time.
I am really curious to see Regie's ideas for the student writing process and how she specifically guides students to be self directed writer/ revisers/ editors. I know this is my school staff development for next year and I am looking forward to leanring more. I am also planning on reading( this summer) Jeff Anderson's book Everyday Editing which I am told will definitely help with ensuring that my students are doing their OWN editing.
I LOVE the story about the 4th graders who rewrote the 4th grade standards based rubric. This a GREAT idea I would like to incorporate into my plans for next year. I would also like to create an overall atmosphere of as Regie says " Bam! Nothing can stop me!" confidence in (your) learners."
I really connected to the part where Regie tells you to "check yourself" and ask yourself who's doing most of the work and what are you spending most of your time doing. Children do not pay attention to and authentically use commercially-printed materials and word walls put up by the word wall fairy. Children will pay attention to their work on the walls and things that you compose together. "Showing, not telling" is a phrase that I repeat in my head a lot to remind me to do this. I also like Reggie's way of saying " I do it, We do it, We do it, We do it, You do it." It is through multiple and meaningful demonstrations that children learn to be independent, self-directed learners as long as they have the background knowledge and are given specific feedback.
ReplyDeleteLike you all, I thought this was a very powerful chapter. It was probably the most inspiring of the whole book for me. So, in response I am going to "self-check" my teaching. Here are three things I felt good about after reading this chapter:
ReplyDelete1. I think I do a good job of teaching responsively and ignoring small distractions...I focus on the big picture.
2. I believe in "choice within structure" and our Humanities curriculum provides a lot of that as well.
3. I love using writing conferences as a tool to monitor student growth and learning, and I believe that doing these conferences during the 20 minutes of independent reading is ensuring that the rest of my students are doing meaningful work while I am conferencing individually.
Here are three things I need to work on:
1. I need to work on creating a organized environment! This is a major weakness of mine. Though my students have complete control over my classroom library, I need to work on encouraging them (and myself) to keep their station (and my desk!) clean and organized throughout the year--not just at the beginning.
2. I need to let students have input on my rubrics. I used to do this with the PACT extended writing rubric and somewhere in the switch to PASS I got away from this. I believe I need to go back in this direction. Routman's "Fourth-Grade Personal Narrative--Student Expectations (Rubric)" was powerful and inspiring--it just reminds me that some things are too valuable to drop from curriculum because I don't "have time."
3. I need to teach conversations. I have an assignment that I love teaching--Multi-Genre Book Clubs--where students talk about books in small groups. There are no "activities"--just thoughtful question guides to help conversation get started, and students get to select the books they read each cycle. After reading the section on pages 105-106 on teaching students to self-direct small, collaborative groups, I realized that I need to work on actively teaching students to communicate with each other a little more directly. I especially liked when Routman encouraged teachers to "discuss the role of facilitator: what he or she does, the fact that facilitators are first chosen by the teacher, then by the kids in the group." I have some ideas now on how to do this, and I think that it will make my Multi-Genre Book Clubs more meaningful in the long run.