Our school is just starting 4-minute walkthroughs (amusingly dubbed
drive-bys by many on this list) and here is one of the things we heard
yesterday at our "debriefing."

Yes, you must have your objective up on the board or somewhere and your
children should know why they're learning such-and-such.  It will increase
their learning 29-44% if you do that.  And you should be teaching that
objective only!!  Research tells us that children learn only one thing at a
time.

I'm not sure where she's reading that research (which she liberally
sprinkles in comes from "Bob Marzano" (I don't think so), but what the whole
meeting made me want to do was to research retirement.  I never, ever in my
wildest dreams imagined I would retire to get away from education.  I
thought there would come a time when I was ready to do something else, but
that it would always be so hard to leave classrooms.  Now I just don't
know.

On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 9:19 AM, Renee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> In the good old days, long before NCLB and when teachers were treated
> more like people who actually knew what they were doing, we used to
> have what were called "teachable moments." When my son, (now age 32)
> was in third grade, he had a fantastic teacher who lived well outside
> the box. I was helping in class one day during reading time when there
> was a big racket up on the roof. The teacher sent out a child to find
> out what was going on. The student came back to say that there were men
> working on the roof. Soon after that, the electricity went off. The
> teacher asked the kids why they thought that happened. Lots of
> responses, all over the board. So the teacher suggested they call the
> electric company. He sent a child to the office to make the call (in
> those days, we did not have phones in our classrooms). Of course, the
> child came back with a note from the secretary wanting clarification,
> yadda yadda, but in the end the child made the call. What did kids
> learn here? Problem solving. Inferencing. Cause and effect. etc etc
> etc.
>
> I shudder to think what happens these days when teachers are mandated
> to get *this* much done in *this* amount of time, and to teach *this*
> skill on *this* day.
>
> Frankly, I long for the days when we weren't so nit-picky about
> discrete things and looked at education with a larger view. In general.
>
> Just thinking on a Saturday morning....
> Renee
>
> On Sep 27, 2008, at 8:11 AM, jan sanders wrote:
>
> > Hi Mary-
> > If the mini-lessons aren't mini, then perhaps they have more than one
> > teaching point?  Too much at once?  Could the lesson be broken down in
> > parts over two or three days?  ....
>
> >   ----- Original Message -----
> >   From: Mary Manges<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >   Hi everyone,
> >   I'm wondering how long most of you have each day for teaching
> > language
> >   arts?
>
>
> "The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in
> a thing makes it happen."
> ~ Frank Lloyd Wright
>
>
>
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>
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