Greetings, GreenMount Community,
Ah, spring
- three to four inches of rain coming and temperatures dipping to the 50s. There must be some botanical/biological
reason that spring is taking so long this year.
Perhaps nature is teasing the plants to grow deeper roots and the
animals to lose their winter coats more slowly in order to avoid rashes. Maybe she is mitigating the onslaught of
annoying insects. Of course, I haven’t a
clue. Probably it is just what the
meteorologists tell us about the jet stream, and the plants and animals are in
as much vernal shock as we are. I just
remember that in Baltimore of past years we went from winter to a few days of
spring, right into summer.
Oh, well, there is nothing we can
do about it except plan appropriately.
As part of that plan, I am suggesting that tomorrow and Wednesday, the
students bring in board games and such for our imminent indoor recesses. I am sure our students are tired of the
activities we have typically used when we have been confined to the building
because of the weather.
During our staff meeting on Friday, teachers reported on
professional articles they have read. Once again, the idea of modeling was highlighted as a very
important way to get kids to start thinking about what they are reading or how
they are solving problems in math or in their research. This idea cannot be emphasized enough. As adults, we have many opportunities to
model for our children, both in the classroom and at home.
Modeling,
however, is not as simple as setting a good example, which is obviously a good
thing to do. In order for modeling to be
most effective, we must talk to the
children about what is being modeled. In
the classroom, this is manifested in a technique called the think-aloud. For example, when trying to find the main
idea of non-fiction text, a teacher may say something like, “As I look at this
text, I notice that some of it is bolded.
This must mean that the author thinks this is important and, therefore,
something I should remember.” Or, when
solving an equation in math class, a teacher might think aloud saying, “This
one is hard. I think I am going to have
to remember which step comes first and work out from the parentheses, doing
those operations first. I think that
I’ll also test my answer for /x/ after I think I have solved for it.”
A
parent visiting the aquarium with his or her child might think aloud about his
or her observations; “That sea turtle is missing a leg. I am very curious about what could have
happened. I’m thinking that he may have
been wounded by a predator.” Statements
like these can be provocative and spark good conversations. Along with good questioning techniques, we
can actually model the kind of thinking that our students will need to be
competent, curious, creative, and contributing as adults. We can
teach their brains how to work well as long as we use ours to model and share
our thinking with them.
Cheers,
Steve
