WAHS Wisdom

5 Steps to Create a Learner-Friendly Culture From Jim Knight, High-Impact Instruction School or classroom culture can promote or prevent student growth, development, and learning. When cultural norms promote hard work, kindness, openness, or respect, those norms can help everyone be more productive, supportive, and respectful. When it comes to school culture, the little things are the big things. Every interaction, every learning experience exists within a culture, and one aspect of effective  instruction is creating a learner-friendly culture. Co-construct Norms with students Teachers and students can create norms on any number of topics, but common themes include approach to learning, respectful interactions, conversation, and support. One way to involve students in co-constructing class norms is to ask them to answer the following four questions by  anonymously writing down answers to the following questions:  How should we approach learning?  What are some ways t...

  TAG, You’re It! and SE2R Feedback Strategies The TAG, You’re It! Feedback strategy is an easy one to implement and can be used for both teacher-student and peer feedback. T: Tell what you like A: Ask a question about the work G: Give an actionable suggestion You’re It!: Self-assess what comes next As a bonus here’s one from my friend Mark Barnes and his book   Assessment 3.0 (not a plug, just an attribution, but it is a great book about actionable feedback and de-emphasizing grades). S: Summarize E: Explain R: Redirect R: Resubmit Summarize You completed the lab on genetics   hypothetical DNA sequence for part of an enzyme Explain Your lab report demonstrates an understanding of substrates and amino acids. However, your designed enzyme shows that you may not understand how enzymes interact with substrates. Redirect and Resubmit Please review the 2nd part of the Building Blocks for Life handout. If that’s unclear, we’ll meet during office hours on Friday to go over this ...

  8 Quick--and Fun--Checks for Understanding 3 Truths and 1 lie . Students create 3 (can also be 2) 3 truths about what they learned and one lie. Students can share them to quiz their classmates or enter in a shared document for review. Topic alphabe t. Assign students letters of the alphabet (can assign all 26 to each student) or have students each do one letter or have them use the letters in their name or something else fun to review the subject. Confidence sort . Provide students with a series of words or phrases. Have them group or sort them by confidence level (likert scale). You can also use Google Forms and the Likert scale for this. It’s a great way for students to build their metacognitive skills especially if later paired with a discussion and a follow-up after an assessment. Formative flower.  At the center of the flower is the topic. Students complete the flower with a each petal being a sub-topic. 4-2-1.  Individually students choose 4 key points from the to...