The teacher handed out a coloring page to her class. On it was a picture of a duck holding an umbrella. The teacher told the class to color the duck in yellow and the umbrella green; however, Leland, the class rebel, colored the duck in a bright fire truck red.

After seeing this, the teacher asked him: "Leland, how many times have you seen a red duck?"

Young Leland replied, "The same number of times I've seen a duck holding an umbrella."

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Teaching Expectations and Curriculum Design Notes

Plan to teach by:
  1. Telling what type of activity they will participate in next
  2. Outlining the expectations you have for the given activity using a visual display such as a notebook    flip chart (or "anchor charts") 
  3. Modeling the behaviors you expect to see with particular emphasis on participation
  4. Having students demonstrate the expectations
  5. Verifying that students understand the expectations -- Dave Levin in "Work Hard. Be Nice" does an excellent example of this when he asks students, in a middle of a lesson, to: "Raise your hand if I lost you. Raise your hand if this is seeming easier to you. Raise your hand if you already to do it by yourself" and continues to teach (Mathews 306). 
I found this list from "Teacher Planner for the Secondary Classroom" by Randall S. Sprick, PH. D. If you click on the book and the first few pages they show you on amazon.com, you will find two hand-outs that are called "CHAMP" and "ACHIEVE" -- acronyms for "Conversation, Help, Activity, Movement, and Participation" and "Activity, Conversation, Help, Integrity, Effort, Value, and Efficiency." Each category has a question or two for teachers to consider in constructing their lessons and curriculum; I have not used them in a classroom but they seem extremely helpful (and I want to record them here for my sporadic amnesia.)
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