Principles of Teaching and Learning

Having taken a course on Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works last summer, a lot of what I read in this article was already familiar to me. Since I teach third grade, I use a lot of the simpler strategies like Prior Knowledge in my teaching every day. My goal this year is to spend a lot more time using the more effective strategies like Similarities and Differences on a more regular basis. As I've been doing the readings through this masters program, and more specifically in this article on Principles of Teaching and Learning, one thing keeps jumping out at me: more often than not I do not take the time to explicitly explain the expectations for an assignment and show my students the rubric before I teach an activity. I'm very careful about explaining the task with step-by-step explicit directions, but I am definitely lacking on the expectations part. One example of this was when I was doing a writing assessment with my class a few years ago. I assigned the task, activated their prior knowledge, went over examples of things they could write about, and told them how much time they had to complete the task. However, I never showed them the rubric I was going to use to grade their writing, and therefore, they did not meet my expectations and did not do very well. When I was in college I was taught how to create rubrics and how to use them for grading, and I use them now more than I ever expected I would, but no one ever tells you to show the kids the rubric FIRST and explain it to them. It's always been more of a tool for me, and my students never saw it until they got it back with a grade attached to their assignment. How stupid of me! My second goal this year is to improve in this area and be very specific about what I want from my students on each and every assignment. I also have the advantage of having a SMARTBoard in my room, so it will be easy for me to pop the rubric up there for the whole class to see.