One of the key principles of learning

that I've tried to incorporate into my practice is helping students become

self- regulated learners, who are directing
their own learning, who are thinking and
reflecting about what they're doing. So
they're not just completing tasks but they're actually getting better as
learners when they're on their own and away from me
so one of the ways I've done this is through my conferences when I meet with
students what I found was after many years of
doing this that they would come in we would work on a problem together maybe a
student gotten stuck on an essay and they would find a solution and then they
would leave in both of us would be happy I'd feel like I'd helped and supported
them they figured out what they wanted to figure out and so we both sort of had
a nice compromise there and what I realized was that many times after these
great positive conferences students were still making the same mistake or coming
back to me at a later time saying I got stuck again I don't know how to do this
or worse just not bringing it up and what I learned to do was to build in an
extra step to those conferences to sort of force that process of reflection and
metacognition thinking about the thinking they were doing so once we have
the conference in and work through some of the issues and talked about them i
would then stop and say okay so what was the problem that you originally came in
with why did you get stuck and what did we just do in the last 20 or 30 minutes
or whatever time we had that helped you get unstuck
how did you solve this problem and what I found when I started doing this was
that frequently students couldn't tell me and if I hadn't asked that question
if I hadn't asked them to stop and think about it they likely would have run out
the door happy and I would have would have been happy to so I this process of
pausing building into the time we have for teaching and asking students to
think about what did you learn how did you figure out and solve this problem
was became the essential part of the conference it wasn't really the essay
that we ended up talking about it became the process of learning
I also realized that I had to make students write down what they had
learned this is a way that they could keep a record of what they've gotten
they could come back and review it and crucially if they ran into that problem
again they then had that resource to go back
and look and I this is a sort of representative of my evolution as a
teacher's I continue to grow thinking about not just solving the problem in
that specific assignment not just that moment in time but helping students
become learners who understand and can guide their own learning when they're
long gone from my classroom.
When I was a new teacher, I did most of the heavy lifting in my classroom I spent
most of the time
talking if I asked a question and nobody knew it I would immediately supply the
answer if a kid raised their hand and they were confused, I would come over and
I would try to give them the answer right away
this meant that they were never really engaged in the struggle and instead they
knew that if they needed something I would come and i would give it right to
them as I've developed further in my teaching practice I really tried to make
sure that i'm more of a facilitator and that the heavy cognitive lifting falls on
my students so they know that if they have a question, I might come over and
then I'll ask them to explain what they're working on or what they're
trying and how it's going and as we have that conversation we can figure out
where the misconception might be and what they can do next
I think this kind of work really helps kids identify where they feel stuck and
then figure out a way to move forward and they know that I'm there to help
them but they aren't so reliant on me this is really important when I think
about them as future learners because i won't always be there to help them and I
need them to have tools so that they can solve their own problems more
independently so every week we take what we call an understanding check a check
for understanding of what the kids can and can't do based on all the material
from the previous months of the course and i find that they can share a lot of
their knowledge and they practice that recall of information while they take
the understanding check but the day after they're presented with the
understanding check again and I circle where they made a mistake I don't tell
them what they did wrong there's no points associated with it minus 2 or
anything like that I just circle what they've done wrong and then they do
understanding check reflection where they first need to explain in words what
they did wrong then they explained in words with the the right solution is and
then they solve it correctly at the bottom and it's really
important for them to explain the: "What I used to think" and "What I think now,"
in their own words, maybe with the help of a peer maybe with the help of a teacher
maybe just by looking back at their notes before they do the correct answer
to confront that that misconception that they used to have and I think that
students learn more in that reflection then they do in in the rest of the week
because they've seen what they've done wrong and they made corrections to that
and they're highly motivated to do that when they get that test back they look
for the green star because they know that's the part that they get to make
right