WAHS Wisdom

Jigsaw = CRT, SEL, Learning For those who have been in education for a significant period of time, we’re aware of educational fads. Some lack scientific merit or are at best badly misconstrued--multiple intelligences, zero tolerance, tracking and whole language. Unfortunately, employing some of these fads actually harms children, especially those who are most vulnerable. Conversely, there are other times that we’re too slow to act; I would include addressing racial disparities and meeting the needs of special education students as two examples. Sometimes it’s the tried and true approaches that, when used correctly, are what’s best for students. Examples include summarization (.79   effect size according to John Hattie ), phonics (.70), classroom discussion (.82) and the Jigsaw Method (1.20). Jigsaw is a multi-step process that was   invented by Elliot Aronson   and his graduate students at the University of Texas-Austin in 1971 not as an instructional strategy but as a ma...

  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...

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...