Teachers will use a variety of effective teaching strategies to effectively engage the many diverse learning styles.
Goal:
I will use the Reciprocal Teaching strategy adopted by the entire school so every student is an active and engaged learner.
Goal Reflection:
The Assessment to Achievement team at our school decided to adopt the Reciprocal Teaching strategy as a solution to our Learner Centered Problem. Reciprocal Teaching is designed to help students become better readers, and I found it difficult to implement into my math classroom. I implemented Reciprocal teaching one strategy at a time, until my students were familiar with the language and goals of each strategy. After months of practicing just one strategy at a time, it became easier to plan a lesson where each strategy was practiced simultaneously. I always incorporate partner sharing into each lesson, but Reciprocal Teaching is completely different. The teacher is able to step back and just observe as the students are each actively engaged in problem solving.
Next year, since 90% of my students will be freshmen who are unfamiliar with this strategy, I will need to introduce each of the four strategies slowly, just as I did this year. But starting at the beginning of the year will allow me to fully implement Reciprocal Teaching by January, giving me half of the school year to fully incorporate this strategy into lessons. The few times I have utilized the whole Reciprocal Teaching strategy, breaking up students into groups and assigning them various roles, the outcomes have been better than I could have hoped for. Students were teaching each other and working together to predict procedures, ask questions, clarify answers, and summarize results is way more impactful than a teacher giving a lecture. Students are forced to be engaged as each student has a specific job and three other students holding them accountable. They gain a deeper understanding of the material, and become better problem solvers when left to their own devices.
Next year, since 90% of my students will be freshmen who are unfamiliar with this strategy, I will need to introduce each of the four strategies slowly, just as I did this year. But starting at the beginning of the year will allow me to fully implement Reciprocal Teaching by January, giving me half of the school year to fully incorporate this strategy into lessons. The few times I have utilized the whole Reciprocal Teaching strategy, breaking up students into groups and assigning them various roles, the outcomes have been better than I could have hoped for. Students were teaching each other and working together to predict procedures, ask questions, clarify answers, and summarize results is way more impactful than a teacher giving a lecture. Students are forced to be engaged as each student has a specific job and three other students holding them accountable. They gain a deeper understanding of the material, and become better problem solvers when left to their own devices.
Evidence:
These images were taken on the day of my congruent triangles Reciprocal Teaching lesson. Students worked in groups to solidify understanding of triangle congruence.
Reflection:
Our school adopted the Reciprocal Teaching strategy as a tool to help us overcome our Learner Centered Problem identified by our Assessment to Achievement team. At first, I really struggled with implementing Reciprocal Teaching in my classroom, as it is a strategy to help students become better readers. I wasn't sure how I could apply these reading strategies to fit in my mathematics classroom. So I took it one step at a time, focusing on just one strategy each month. In January, I focused on just questioning. I wanted students to understand that questioning is one of the first steps to improving understanding, whether in a reading context, or mathematical context, on their homework, or in a lecture class. To help my students become better questioners, I modeled questioning for them. As I would solve problems on the board, I would ask myself questions so my students could see what sort of questions they should be asking themselves as they work through a problem. I also bribed students with candy, which they earned any time they asked a thoughtful and on-topic question, to help encourage the development of this strategy.
The following month we focused on clarifying. Although we clarify often in our classroom, my goal was to explicitly state each time we clarified, so students could become familiar with the Reciprocal Teaching language they were using in each class. When students would ask a question like, "Shouldn't that be marked as congruent?" or "How did you do that?" I would respond with "Great clarifying question..." to help them recognize when they use the strategy, even if they do it without thinking about it, and to continue to familiarize them with the reciprocal teaching language.
In March, the strategy of focus was predicting. I encouraged students to predict what the answer would look like before starting a problem. This required asking some clarifying questions like, "What does the answer look like when I solve an equation?" or "What will the units of measure be?" or "Am I looking for an angle measure or a side length?" so we could make thoughtful predictions about our solutions. When you predict what the answer will look like, it not only helps to solidify the process that will be used to get to the solution, it also helps you keep track of units of measure, or identify what the question is really asking. This happened a lot in the geometry unit when students were challenged with finding x in an algebraic equation, only to have to plug the value into another expression to find the length or angle measure. It helped to clarify what was being asked and predict what the answer would look like.
Finally, the month of April we focused on summarizing. I figured a great way to practice this strategy was to summarize Reciprocal Teaching as a whole and practice all of the strategies together. This particular Reciprocal Teaching task was my best lesson the entire year. I started out the lesson by modeling each of the strategies in the same way I wanted them to use the strategies. I then passed out colored Popsicle sticks, which were used to assign roles to each student. After each problem, students would switch Popsicle sticks, thus switching roles. The students were able to practice triangle congruence theorems and they worked together to improve understanding better than I have ever been able to teach them. Although Reciprocal Teaching is designed to create better readers, making some small adaptations to the RT strategies makes for much better mathematicians too! There is so much value in students teaching students, and I am definitely a fan of this strategy in a math classroom.
The following month we focused on clarifying. Although we clarify often in our classroom, my goal was to explicitly state each time we clarified, so students could become familiar with the Reciprocal Teaching language they were using in each class. When students would ask a question like, "Shouldn't that be marked as congruent?" or "How did you do that?" I would respond with "Great clarifying question..." to help them recognize when they use the strategy, even if they do it without thinking about it, and to continue to familiarize them with the reciprocal teaching language.
In March, the strategy of focus was predicting. I encouraged students to predict what the answer would look like before starting a problem. This required asking some clarifying questions like, "What does the answer look like when I solve an equation?" or "What will the units of measure be?" or "Am I looking for an angle measure or a side length?" so we could make thoughtful predictions about our solutions. When you predict what the answer will look like, it not only helps to solidify the process that will be used to get to the solution, it also helps you keep track of units of measure, or identify what the question is really asking. This happened a lot in the geometry unit when students were challenged with finding x in an algebraic equation, only to have to plug the value into another expression to find the length or angle measure. It helped to clarify what was being asked and predict what the answer would look like.
Finally, the month of April we focused on summarizing. I figured a great way to practice this strategy was to summarize Reciprocal Teaching as a whole and practice all of the strategies together. This particular Reciprocal Teaching task was my best lesson the entire year. I started out the lesson by modeling each of the strategies in the same way I wanted them to use the strategies. I then passed out colored Popsicle sticks, which were used to assign roles to each student. After each problem, students would switch Popsicle sticks, thus switching roles. The students were able to practice triangle congruence theorems and they worked together to improve understanding better than I have ever been able to teach them. Although Reciprocal Teaching is designed to create better readers, making some small adaptations to the RT strategies makes for much better mathematicians too! There is so much value in students teaching students, and I am definitely a fan of this strategy in a math classroom.