Getting to know you

Last Wednesday, our little class of future teachers was scheduled to meet with some local young minority adults for a night of fun and a getting-to-know-you session. Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond my control, I was forced to miss the event, and I hated to miss out on the opportunity to interact with students I've never met.

Although I was unable to be present that night, I did have occasion last fall to observe a racially mixed third grade classroom in the Madison area. Interestingly enough, 85 percent of the student population of that particular school receives free and reduced lunches, which is a really high number. My initial knee-jerk reaction, sadly enough, was to gird my loins and expect the worst. It's hard to avoid jumping to the conclusion that poorer students will be more unruly than their more affluent counterparts. Of course, in reality, that's not always the case.

And it wasn't in this one either. I truly enjoyed my time working with those kids, and in almost every instance, they were really well-behaved and a delight to be around. Not all of the children were highly engaged in the lessons being taught, but let's face it, that's the norm in any classroom.

One of the lessons taught by Dr. Aida Michlowski during her presentation on multiculturism had to do with putting ourselves in other people's shoes and trying as hard as we can to understand what they're going through. Just in talking to students about their lives you begin to see a little bit what challenges each of them face, but you also learn their strengths and their interests, and you find out what talents they have. Things like color and religious background begin to matter less and less. All kids need opportunities to enhance their skills while working on those areas that give them difficulty. And they need to be challenged to break out of their comfort zones and apply what they've learned in new and foreign situations.

Still, as teachers, we need to be cognizant of whatever challenges they face outside of school and work to block them out. Or better yet, perhaps even turn them to their advantage in some way.

Reading time

Fitting reading activities into daily classroom activities presents problems for teachers. On the one hand, they know reading is important, but then again, educators have to wonder about whether class time should be spent doing something else. After all, students can read whatever material that's pertinent to a particular lesson at home, perhaps in preparation for the following day's class, and there's only so much time in a school day.

However, as John Lee, author of "Visualizing Elementary Social Studies Methods," writes, "Teachers should value all forms of reading in class." Why? I suspect it's because in-class reading activities can improve the reading skills of all students. For example, when students read to each other, and listen to how their fellow classmate is reading, it can improve fluency. Perhaps that's more of a concern for those teaching reading, but in the end, the more opportunities students have to read, it's likely they'll become better readers. And that goes for understanding as well as fluency.

But, time is limited, and we, as teachers, have to make the best use of whatever precious minutes are available for reading. How do we do that? Lee has some suggestions. One, he opines that setting aside 10 to 15 minutes for reading is ideal. You can't read "War and Peace" in that amount of time, but you can provide students with small chunks of written material to peruse within that short period.

According to Lee, teachers need to keep these pedagogical factors in mind when assigning readings, whether in class or out: determine how students would benefit from reading certain written materials when learning about a particular subject; consider conditions such as time, students' reading abilities and length of the source; and how the reading should be adapted and contextualized.

Going further, as potential teachers of social studies, we ought to think about the literacy-related skills the National Council for Social Studies has determined are essential for studying related subject matter. Of course, reading, studying, and thinking are three of them, but we ought to be concerned also with having students develop reference and information search skills, tech savvy and the ability to organize and use information.

There is a great social studies activity outlined on pg. 260-261 from National Geographic's Underground Railroad Experience at http://www.nationalgeographic.com/railroad that offers a rich variety of opportunities for students to work on their social studies literacy skills. I'm sure you all read it, but it follows an imagined runaway slave through different states. Students use various resources to determine the risk the slave faces while on the run. Map skills, visualizing and creative writing are some of the skills that such an activity fosters. And these are the kinds of things we need to keep in mind when developing social studies literacy lessons in our own classrooms.

Assessing without really trying

There are those rare teachers who seem to handle their classroom instruction effortlessly, moving from topic to topic with the ease of a ballroom dancer. And when something unexpected arises, it doesn't throw them. They roll with the changes, without losing sight of the objectives of their lessons. Then, there are the rest, the ones who have to work at classroom management and get flummoxed when things go wrong. They can still rally to create educational opportunities that successfully meet learning targets, but it's a struggle. I'm guessing I'll be in that category, the one where nothing comes easy.

Of course, experience can help, but occasionally, the really talented teachers are just naturals. Learning how to conduct informal assessment techniques, though, can help those of us who are somewhat more clumsy or inexperienced in front of a class at least carry out assessments without kids becoming aware that they are being evaluated. Well, "evaluated" is not the right word, actually. Evaluations usually involve tests, according to John Lee, author of the textbook "Visualizing Elementary Social Studies Methods." Although both assessments and evaluations involve gathering information about student learning, assessment can be used as an aid to instruction, because it is conducted at the start of, during and after instruction, whereas evaluation only occurs at the end. Lee offers three informal assessment techniques that should be easy for all of potential teachers to employ.

Questioning is one means of informal assessment that provides teachers with a means of gaining an immediate understanding of where students are at in the educational process. Queries should be open-ended and non-confrontational. They should open doors, not slam them shut on students. We want to encourage their curiosity, and in the end, we want them to give good answers. So we wait .. we wait for them and help guide them to come up with a well-formulated answers, and we need to call on both the enthusiastic and the shy. That way, we get everyone involved, helping elevate all students in the class and not just reinforce the knowledge of a few elite students.

A second way to assess students without them being aware it's being done is to poll them. When a teacher needs to check for understanding regarding certain subject matter in a way that is less intrusive, a quick way of doing it is to find out how many students agree with points being made or certain concepts being taught. Lastly, there is the seat check technique. By circulating about the room and checking on students' work at their seats, teachers can get a good idea where they're at with regard to the rest of the class. Coming up with criteria that can be used to determine how well they are carrying out their assignments is a key component of this technique. Teachers who do this can correct and redirect students who are off track. All of these three techniques appear easy to implement without being obvious about it. 

Group think

There are three little words that educators should remember when designing lessons based on interactive instruction: "dynamic," "active" and "meaningful." According to advice from John Lee, author of "Visualizing Elementary Social Studies Methods," programs that attempt to engage students using interactive instruction should be all of those things and more.

Keeping students actively involved is not as easy as it sounds, but making sure they are engaged with other students is one way. Collaboration, on the other hand, leads to meaningful learning, if it promotes the idea of students working together on something that they can relate to in their daily lives. To make a lesson dynamic, however, requires a skilled hand. Teachers must design lessons with flexibility in mind, organizing materials in such a way as to build energy and create intellectually vigorous activities with shifting concerns.

For the novice teacher, these are treacherous waters. There are a world of considerations to ponder while designing such lessons, not the least of which is how do we group our students. Many of us have already written lesson plans that make a point of including group work in classroom activities. It stands to reason, however, that few of us have put much thought into exactly how we group our students. Do we split them up into groups of four? What exactly will they be doing in their groups? How should they divide the work? Will they present their findings to the class? Should each group be homogeneous or heterogeneous? Perhaps partnering up students in pairs would be a better idea?

All of this comes down to knowing our students, their abilities and what they know already about the subject they'll be studying. Just as it's important for educators to be flexible when it comes to creating dynamic interactive instruction, we should be just as malleable, and perhaps even experimental, when it comes to splitting students up into groups. As Chapter 9 of Lee's book reveals, there are many considerations to address before implementing interactive instruction approaches. Just the act of being willing to try different means of grouping students, I believe, will create the kind of dynamic learning environment teachers want. Shaking things up on occasion can keep students from getting complacent. The idea I find very interesting is that of jigsaw grouping, where teachers have each group complete one activity and then change the composition of each group before moving on to the next task. What better way to keep students on their toes than to change the game on occasion.