Jen McDonough
March 11, 2011
I am the kind of teacher that talks too much! In my quest to teach as much as I can, I end up not teaching at all because the kids get lost in all that I am saying to them. I have all the right intentions. I pull the kids close to me on the rug and I use my most enthusiastic-you are not going to believe what I am about to tell you-voice and then I start talking. And talking...and talking. One good strategy leads to the next and before I know it, I have been going at it for 15 minutes, wondering why all of my First Graders are playing with their shoelaces or trying to use the, "I have to go to the bathroom" excuse, to get outta there! Not good.
So I started to think about how to focus my strategy lessons in both reading and writing so that I would teach one thing, really well. I use the acronym "SASS" to help me-Simple, Authentic, Short and Stick to the point!
Keep it simple. Pick a strategy that is within the Zone of Proximal Development for your kids. You want your teaching to stick, so you need to think about where your kids are as readers and writers and teach them the strategies that will help them grow in small and appropriate steps to becoming better at what they are currently able to do.
Teach authentically. When you are planning your reading and writing lessons, ask yourself, "Is this a strategy I REALLY use as a reader or writer?" If you find yourself trying to sell a strategy that you don't use or necessarily believe is helpful-let it go. The kids will know if you are trying to sell them a bill of goods. Your teaching will be reflective and clear because you have tried the strategy yourself enough to know that it works and is worth knowing.
Keep your lessons short. We all know now that the attention span of the kids you teach is equal to their age. Keep it to the amount of minutes that represents the age you teach. 6 year olds=6 minutes. Any longer than that...well you already know what happens when 6 year olds get bored-not fun for anyone involved!
Finally, stick to your teaching point. One of the biggest mistakes we make as teachers is getting ourselves off track. One quick lesson on how to decode an unknown word by looking at word patterns, can quickly turn into another idea about how to use the context of the sentence to help you, which can then turn into thinking about what is going on in the story, which leads to retelling what you have read so far and on and on and on...you get the drift, I'm sure you are already thinking about a lesson you've taught that has gone that way. Then somehow, after teaching one of these lessons with 50 teaching strategies, we get mad at the kids and wonder why they aren't using what we taught! Meanwhile the kids are thinking...what was that about again? Ugh.
So remember, if you find yourself wondering why your teaching is not sticking with your students...think about planning and teaching your strategy lessons with "SASS"!