 |
 |
ELLEN
BERG
Diary #9
Activities
vs. Strategies:
Instructions vs. Instruction
I am just beginning
to understand the power of learning.
I volunteered
to spend my Saturday morning at an inservice sponsored by a textbook company
for middle school teachers in our district. I went partly because I want
to be on the textbook adoption committee, and it was strongly suggested
that we attend if we wanted to participate on the committee. The other reason
I attended was because the inservice was about strategies to help struggling
readers.
The presenter,
Dr. Kylene
Beers from the University of Houston, was excellent. I was impressed
with her real-world experience with struggling readers and her passion for
her students. Dr. Beers teaches only one class at the university level and
spends the rest of her time in classrooms. For one full semester each year,
she takes over one class of students to implement reading strategies and
collect data. Better yet, she does all of this in the Houston Unified School
District, a district that faces challenges of poverty and under-performing
schools much like St. Louis.
On top of all
this, the strategies she shared were very simple and "doable." She was completely
credible, and I enjoyed her presentation.
One comment
she made that really hit home with me was, "The difference between strategies
and activities is the involvement of the teacher. If you give kids something
to do but then sit behind your desk or grade papers, it is just an activity."
Strategies involve the teacher listening to students' comments, asking focusing
questions, monitoring individual progress, and scaffolding instruction.
OK, so it isn't
terribly new information, but it is something that I -- and many other people
in the room -- needed to hear.
Exciting
activities don't always equal learning
I think sometimes
it is easy to get caught up in the creation of activities, or to do something
so often that it becomes meaningless for both the teacher and the students.
I think back to the shipwreck project I was going to do last year, and I
think that was in danger of becoming just an activity. The longer I teach,
the more I realize how difficult it is to remain focused on using strategies
to teach concepts, to reach an end goal rather than to plan activities that
require or touch upon specific skills but do not teach them.
Another interesting
comment Dr. Beers made is, "Do not confuse instructions with instruction."
Just because we tell students about something or explain a concept does
not mean we have taught them anything. I think about my reader response
lessons last year, and I understand her comment.
Initially I
was giving instructions, telling my students what to do but not really giving
them the strategies to do what I told them. I did not actually teach them
anything until they -- and I -- had failed the task. Once I went back and
used student examples and had a class discussion about what was successful,
the light bulb clicked on for my students. At that point, I had actually
instructed my students.
How do we keep
ourselves focused on instruction? I know that it takes time, and diligence,
and experience. It takes careful reflection on each lesson. Am I really
helping my kids create an understanding of each concept, or am I just keeping
them busy for the period with an activity that is topically related? I think
I am more successful than I give myself credit for, but it is hard to keep
standards in mind and develop challenging, authentic strategies that scaffold
student learning.
Kids don't
need to learn thinking skills -- they need to use them
Dr. Beers also
said that all the thinking strategies language arts teachers are assigned
to teach -- cause/effect, sequencing, summarizing, inference, etc. -- cannot
be taught. She told us to listen to the kids' conversations in the hallway,
and we would see they already know and use all of those thinking skills
with things that mattered to them. Instead of trying to give instructions
to explain these thinking skills, we should spend our time giving students
authentic opportunities to use them. She gave us several pre-reading, during
reading, and after reading strategies to help deepen students' comprehension.
I am happy I
gave up my Saturday morning to attend the workshop. Because I went to that
workshop, I am rethinking my practices, my very attitudes about teaching
and learning. Learning is probably the most powerful force I know of. What
else has the ability to help a human being evolve not over millions of years
but in an afternoon?
Comment
on this diary entry
Read
next week's diary
Read
last week's diary
|
|
|
