The View is Clear Looking Ahead...: 9/11-9/15

Print Friendly The Week Ahead....

Monday, September 11th-
Day 2-
PLC Grades 3-6
Wear Red, White & Blue

Out of Building-None

Tuesday, September 12th-
Day 3-

Out of Building-None

Wednesday, September 13th-
Day 4-
PLC Grades 1-2
Picture Day!
Intramurals Begins

Out of Building-None

Thursday, September 14th-
Day 5-

Out of Building- Shellenberger (Full Day)

Friday, September 15th-
Day 6-

Out of Building-Beam (Full Day), Mellinger (Half Day PM)

PLC in Print

Seven Ways We Can Coach, Teach, and Create Better Learners
(from The Master Teacher Pd, vol. 47, No. 3)

"Here are seven ways we can coach, teach, and nurture better learners. It's a blueprint for us to consult and utilize as we lead students throughout the year.
1. Introduce new content and skills by starting with the larger concept or system.
Remember to first help students see the whole before introducing and focusing on the parts and details.
2. Encourage students to ask "why?"
Knowing why they're learning a concept, how it will benefit them, and what they can do with it aids learning and retention.
3. Always teach students to transfer what they learn to other settings and applications.
Unless we routinely give students practice transferring learning across contexts, it will not happen for a significant portion of learners.
4. Encourage students to take learning personally.
"Reasons," beyond gaining teacher and family approval, for the purpose of learning make learning significant and worth doing - and give students the power to influence their environment and control their future.
5. Give students opportunities to discover and construct their own learning in addition to the pre-framed, constructed learning tasks you give them.
The process of investigation, organization, hypothesizing, testing and discovering give students experience and builds skills important to success, especially in environments where problems don't come neatly packaged, waiting to be solved. Teaching student to frame problems rather than just solve them will serve students well now and in the future.
6. Provide students with ample opportunities to learn with and from others.
Finding, creating, and encouraging opportunities for students to engage with and learn from others can build flexible learning skills.
7. Teach, support, and have students practice reflection and self-assessment.
Among strategies we can use are having students maintain reflection journals, modeling reflective learning, and asking students to engage in formal reflections following significant challenges and projects.
The Master Teacher knows that we must prepare students to be their own best teachers. As researcher John Hattie states, "our focus must be on helping learners see themselves as their own best teachers."
To Learn More:
Hattie, J. (2012) Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning. Abingdon: Routledge