At the end of the day yesterday, I felt like I was rushing to get my students out the door. Many hadn't finished the art project we were working on and needed to bring the pieces home in a bag. Very few had the chance to get to center time. I've spent much of the last 12 hours thinking about the fact that I'm always pushing my students to hurry to get things done. I keep asking what I could have done differently yesterday, but as I think about my plans and the work that we did, I just don't see anything to get rid of. In fact, I didn't even get to everything that I had originally planned. A half day just never seems like enough time!
I've had this conversation with a few other teachers recently, and the interesting thing that came up was the connection between our tendency to rush kids through things and our frustration when kids rush through testing. All day long, many of us push kids to work efficiently, walk places quickly, transition quickly, etc. We have a lot that we want to teach them, and we want to get to as much content as possible. But, when we ask kids to take a test, we want them to slow down. I remember getting incredibly frustrated when a student would finish the whole MAP test in 30 minutes (or less) because I felt like she wasn't doing her best work. How confusing for students! Go, go, go, go, go, slow down!
What do you do to allow students to delve deeply into topics and do their best work while still balancing the amount of content that we are expected to teach?
Great Point! I never really thought about it in that way before. You really just made me have an "Ah hah" moment. I feel the same way as I am rushing to cram everything into a day or a unit, but then when any kind of test comes along its SLOW DOWN!! I think this translates over into "wait time" as well. I am terrible with my "wait time" and need to give kids more time to answer my questions. If they know that I will wait until everyone has had a chance to think, they will be more willing to participate and engage. Especially in Math I think the "wait time" is crucial. As far as the balance I think it is hard for the kindergardeners to understand the time in a day and in a week. With my 4th graders I try to give them the whole picture and time frame for a project or for a unit. It really helps for some students, while other students could continue to care less. But for those slow workers or the fast workers, I can get them to start budgeting their time effectively to meet the deadlines and due dates.
ReplyDeleteThis issue reminds me of my training with direct instruction in reading and choral response. The signal for responding to a question is scripted..."this is the letter D........[wait time]..what letter?" "D." I feel that the expectations we carry with us as we teach (i.e., finishing units or preparing for tests), we get that urge to rush students on to the next activity. It would be nice if we could implement a "wait time" procedure into our daily instruction or a prescribed signal for responding to instill that ethic of "taking your time" "checking your work" that we want them to utilize during testing.
ReplyDeleteFrequently hands shoot up to our questions before students even have the answers nailed down in their brains...maybe a "signal" for when you are ready to take responses (i.e., ask the question....10 second pause..."hands"...hands go up to answer) would help both their and our sense of pacing in the classroom.