I’ve got a couple of keynotes coming up and submitted this as the title. I’m good at that; coming up with a title and then figuring out what to say. I realize that’s probably the worst way to develop something but that’s how I roll.
I tend to rely as much as possible on others to help me with this stuff. Call it lazy or smart, whatever, that’s also how I roll.
I began by posting this question to the twitter.
Lots of great responses came in.
Thanks for the great responses everyone.
As you can see there are some patterns. These are really helpful to me as I try and connect the dots in my own thinking as well as try and develop a coherent presentation of ideas to share with others.
In fairness, twitter does restrict ideas from being fully developed and yet it requires the reader to do a bit of thinking and meaning making on their own. But I do want to provide this space to continue the conversation and perhaps clarify my intent and thinking.
Many of the ideas of what to keep, in my mind are actually fairly new practices. Things like project based learning, teacher collaboration are not yet entrenched in schools but indeed many are moving this way. Part of my talk hopes to illicit deep rooted practices and beliefs about teaching and learning that we need to continue and indeed are classroom practices as opposed to system type practices and policies. My goal is to expose teachers to some new ideas, which I have plenty of, but also to remind them of great things they’ve always done and should continue to do.
If you have a moment, please let me know about educational practices and experiences that you had that were positive and that you feel we ought not to lose sight of as well as ones you feel are still happening that need to be ditched. Feel free to expand on ideas already posted above or offer some new ones.
Dean Shareski
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One thing I’ve always felt was tremendously important in my classroom was daily time for free reading: 15-20 minutes (sometimes a little more) of free choice reading when kids could pick from a variety of titles, genres, and materials – books, magazines, etc. Sometimes it took a little while for them to get used to totally focusing on the reading, but when I told them they could do it either individually or in pairs (or even in small groups) they were much more excited to do it. Interestingly enough, most of the reading they did was individual, but that was the time for the most authentic exchanges. The best book talks ever were the ones the happened during that time! It was so much fun observing their interactions – both with books and with each other. I say this is a KEEP!
Agreed! After a couple of us read Kelly Gallagher’s Readicide, my grade-level team decided this fall to try to devote some time each week to SSR (sustained silent reading), and we’re already seeing results. I’m hoping this can be a KEEP. I may have to DUMP some of our “official” reading list to make it work.
Thanks Clark,
Glad you posted about SSR. I really was hoping more of the focus was on what’s working or in your case what has worked that we may have abandoned. Many of us spend so much time focusing on what’s wrong we forget about what’s right. I hope a few more will chime in to reveal some more forgotten practices of old.
Get rid of canned or scripted lessons. Keep creative, dynamic and fluid learning experiences.