Probably the most important part of teaching is knowing your kids. As a first year teacher, I don't have the wealth of experience that veteran teachers do, and that I second guess myself a bit. Are my kids having the expected outcome? Are they meeting my learning target? What could/should I change to make maximize engagement?
This week I had one of those second guessing moments. We had transitioned from reviewing some cause-effect relationships in fairly easy text to looking for them in our social studies text. In particular, what caused events that formed colonies, and what was the effect of those events? Once we transitioned, the learning became fragmented, and lots of off-task behavior started. For me, the off-task behavior isn't the kids fault. It is related to my instruction, and my lack of scaffolding (as well as engaging work).
Instead of working with small groups and helping them on the text, we read whole group. We stopped looking for events that happened, and looked for the cause/effect. Big questions were "Why did that happen? Who did that impact? or What was the impact of that?" For example, the Jamestown colony was built on a marsh. What was the effect of that? Light bulbs went off as we traveled through the idea that mosquitoes were there in the wet marsh. Mosquitoes carry malaria, and the settlers got bit by them... hence they died. Ah ha!
Again, it takes re-reading. Re-reading isn't lots of fun. But it needs to be done.
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