WAHS Wisdom

Creating Interactive Classroom Experiences Creating an interactive classroom experience for students makes learning accessible and relevant to students while also creating teacher-student and student-student relationships.   As a classroom teacher I tried to engage all students every 5-10 minutes. During a lecture this might have been something as simple as jot down your prediction or turn to your partner and share. In online learning environments continuously engaging students is both more difficult and more important. We should strive for MORE frequent interactive opportunities for students. Fortunately, we can address the importance and difficulty with some simple and purposeful maneuvers.     First, let’s look at why creating interactive experiences for students is important. Research shows that when students have their laptops in college classrooms, they are more prone to multi-tasking--spending up to 42% of class multitasking. Knowing that our brains canno...

  8 Ways of Creating Opportunities for Student Social Connections  Online learning creates barriers to community, communication and connection. We ask ourselves and share in our PLCS: Are students showing up for online learning?  Are they interacting with each other?  Are they engaged in their learning?  When we answer “no” to the above questions, we recognize that many of these students are not connected with the content or peers. In a traditional classroom, we have standard practices to engage these students and build relationships. Some of our strategies translate well to online learning but others require us to be more intentional in seeking ways to build trusting relationships.  Here are 8 ways of creating opportunities for students to build social connections.  Story-telling . Stories, especially those that let students see the true you, are powerful at creating relationships and engaging students with learning. Purposeful stories share and nurtu...

Using Think Alouds to Get Students to Think Like Experts Most of our content specialists and teachers. Using Think Alouds during synchronous learning shows students HOW an expert chooses a course of action. When thinking aloud we demonstrate ways of approaching difficult problems through complex thinking. There are 3 steps to effective Think Alouds.  Use an I statement to signal your expert thinking Speculate to unpack the thinking (most often this is an act on our part) Slow the process down so students can observe and learn from the think aloud and discuss problems you face and how you tried to solve them.  Think aloud strategies can be easily adapted to different situations and can be integrated into student learning to make learning more visible. They are an exceptional way of scaffolding instruction for students of lagging academic skills and/or metacognitive or learning skills. It’s uses are varied and include  Solving a complex math problem.  Deciphering a gra...

Teaching without talking One of my greatest faults as a teacher was I was for too long too reluctant to cede control to students. I taught by telling. What a great way to kill a student’s curiosity. Slowly, I started to discover ways to teach without talking and along the way I learned a couple of lessons.  First the lessons.  Students need to have the appropriate background knowledge for the task, otherwise learning will not take place. I think this is often why project-based learning fails.  Students need to be taught to learn this way and it requires practice. Don’t expect it to work the first time.  When it all comes together, it’s one of the most amazing experiences for students.  I think teaching without talking has some unique possibilities in the virtual classroom. Here are 3 of my favorites.  Buzz Groups In buzz groups, the teacher starts the lesson a question that leads into what is going to be taught for the day. The starting question may be conc...