Past Teaching Practices / Current Teaching Practices
Whole class instruction - 90% of the literacy block. / Whole class instruction – 20% of literacy block.
Data based on end of unit Open Court Tests and Fluency assessments. / Daily Conferring with students during the literacy block (one-on-one and strategy groups) allows ongoing assessment and progress monitoring. Just right assessments allow teachers to diagnose students’ learning needs (fluency, phonemic awareness, comprehension) in order to provide the appropriate literacy instruction.
Students relied on us to get them to stay on task. / Implementing Daily Five allows students to self-monitor their own behaviors by utilizing anchor charts, modeling appropriate behaviors, and building stamina.
Taught Open Court with the goal of trying to get through the entire program neglecting the academic needs of our students. / Utilizing CAFÉ strategies provides built-in flexibility that allows teachers to tailor the system to reflect the needs of their students and CCSS.
Student relied on us to plan/brainstorm all writing prompts without taking into consideration what they wanted to write about. / Student plan/brainstorm ideas for their own writing within a given genre. Students are taught strategies to plan their own writing.
Made corrections on students’ writing work and required them to rewrite the corrections we made for them on their final draft. / Student self-monitor their work as well as work in partnerships to provide feedback while teacher confers to elicit information to help students with their thinking. Students are taught strategies to revise and edit their own work.
A Call to Action
As Team Guinn moves into a third year of professional learning, we feel it’s our obligation as responsible educators to continue to grow and become more effective at our craft. During the 2013-2014, Team Guinn is going to establish a learning group or think tank where like-minded educators can come together to share, problem-solve, grow and become more effective at their craft. If you want to know more about the learning group or want to become a member, please contact any team member for more information. Al Speight, , Jessica Guinn, , Maria De Luna, .