My first year of teaching, I found myself staying at the school late into the night, every night. While I like to consider myself a first-one-in, last-one-out kind of employee, this was not exactly what caused me to stay at the building as long as I did. I stayed at the building because each evening, I would look down upon the next day as one steps across a rotting rope bridge, hoping the wooden plank upon which they place their next foot doesn’t fall off and disappear into the mist beneath them.
I had no idea what was coming next. Even worse, I had no idea how to plan it.
The basic idea of a lesson is that you have this thing you want to teach (the objective) and this way you want to get kids to learn it (the instruction, the activities, the movie you plan on watching, whatever). I vaguely remembered learning about this in my professionally mandated coursework, but I more vividly remember being told that my lessons were horrible during my Student Teaching experience. As a first year teacher, I thought I was doing “okay”. I had built positive relationships with students, yet classes were still fairly inconsistent. Some days worked, some days didn’t. I found hideaways like talking passionately and incessantly about the literature itself, but rarely at a level useful or valuable to a disinterested 10th grader who barely noticed Piggy was missing his glasses in the first place. This served as a port in a storm for a first year teacher. It did not serve as effective pedagogy.
As a veteran teacher, I now know what to expect. I know what awaits me with each step across a significantly more trustworthy overpass. But more importantly, my students do too.
Each lesson of mine, which cover different topics spread across the curriculum and through multiple projects, while still weaving in targeted lessons for grammar or reading goals, follows a pretty reliable sequence. This sequence uses a philosophy taught to me years ago by a mentor, but still nothing new to those in the world of education. He called it Gradual Release, and it also goes by I, We, You, and I’d like to take a moment to illustrate how these simple sequences have helped me save time and create strong lessons that all my students can grasp onto.
To ensure a positive start to the class, I implore a “Do Now” to greet students as they enter the room. This is worth 1 point (of a potential 10 points) they can earn over the course of a standard class. This task may be a review, something that activates their prior knowledge, or something personal to get them talking and thinking about their own life. I have found the “Do Now” to be an invaluable component of instilling a strong culture of predictable procedures in my classroom and would encourage every teacher to use it. In fact, I would not consider this part of the lesson, rather an institution of the classroom itself.
The central concept begins with me holding all of the information. Whatever skill my students (theoretically) cannot perform, they will be given an (theoretically) expert role model. They can’t use statistics to support an argument, I will show them how. They can’t talk about the elements of mood, I will show them how. They don’t know how to punctuate for an appositive, I will show them. They’ve never heard of an independent clause, I will show them.
So first I show them. At the onset of the lesson, they have no responsibility to have mastered this content. Why would they? I haven’t taught them anything. So I perform the task. I model my thinking, or break down my actions into easily traceable and repeatable steps. There is room for these models to emerge out of a classroom discussion, but if you’re in survival mode and want something that will work for sure, you might want to eschew that community-building component (though in the long run, I find it to be a positive and beneficial experience for teacher and students). The models might look like the following:
1.) First we read the article
2.) When we see something that makes us say “oh my gosh” we highlight it.
3.) In the margins we write why it’s important to our thesis.
OR
1.) We circle the verbs in the sentence.
2.) We find WHO or WHAT is doing the verb and we underline that.
3.) We read the clause and determine if it could be a sentence on it’s own or if it simply doesn’t make sense without more information.
OR
1.) We describe the setting.
2.) We have our character do something or say something.
3.) As the characters are acting or talking we take time to describe what they look like as well as the action.
4.) Don’t forget to include details the show the life inherent to the setting, be it weather, other characters, or fuzzy critters.
5.) Add a detail about what the character is thinking.
6.) Explain how the action or conversation ends.
The actual sequence one might use to accomplish these goals can change. For instance, no one actually believes that every story must be started with that final 6 step process. While a lot of this may feel inflexible, a strong classroom culture and a positive relationship between teachers and students allow for more conversations to weed out other ways the central task may be accomplished. (This is normal. This is okay. This is actually a positive thing.) But ensuring that every kid has access to a system that will help them perform the intended task, in my eyes, is an essential component. So now that I’ve presented them with an exemplar and a pathway to create their own, I can assume that they have a general understanding of what I want them to do. The first part of the lesson was performed by me (the I of I, We, You fame). But learning often requires practice.
The next part is where most of the learning will actually take place. Students need a chance to practice skills. If everything in the world could be understood by a simple observance of its rules, life would be much easier for teachers, and that will never be an overarching theme of this newsletter.
I Gradually Release responsibility from Me to Them, and this instance is where the “We” in I, We, You shows up. Now I let them work on a task to demonstrate their content mastery. I refer to this part of the class as the 3-Pointer. While the aforementioned Do Now is worth 1 point of their daily 10 point assignment, this activity is always worth 3 (grade students as you feel best serves them, the school’s mission, your administrator’s mandate, et. al., but this works for me.) In this period students work collaboratively, broken up into groups, partners, pods or teams as the teacher deems reasonable. Often times I let students work with someone next to them, but if a strong culture of trust is established, I’m more open to more freedom for those decisions - and if that’s a goal that we’re particularly far from, I take more ownership of the groupings.
Groupwork has a few fundamental advantages to teacher directed instruction.
1.) It breaks up the monotony of remaining in a single space for the entirety of the day. The social aspect is invigorating to learners.
2.) Attention spans change when students converse amongst themselves and are not being talked at by some coffee-breathed dinosaur who cares too much about “unreal numbers”.
3.) Language and familiarity provide student to student discussion as a completely new means of learning a topic you may have missed.
4.) But most importantly, the students are practicing a concept in a sheltered activity where they can still ask for help from a teacher if their friend also struggled with the idea (although the more commonplace this is, the more one should reflect and reframe your modeling).
So now, we have provided a low-stakes environment, buzzing with the laughter of friendship for students to demonstrate capacity towards the formerly brand-new skill to which they’ve been exposed. Usually this represents a good opportunity for students to willingly share the impressive and/or HiLaRiOuS exemplars they’ve cooked up with their peers. Celebration and corrections ensue in a woven harmony that leads to the final activity of the lesson; where students will earn their final 6 points while demonstrating their mastery over the content independently.
Now responsibility has been released completely to the students. The student is tasked with an activity, solely and without help (although we are always adjusting the dials on this as individual needs rise) to demonstrate that they have mastered this concept. We have gone from I (the teacher) to We (the collaborative cluster of students) to You (the individual student). This gradual release of responsibility allows the student to think in silent independence, and to do their best on the task. They may crush it. They may struggle. But by giving students this predictable routine you give them the best opportunity to come into an environment and learn a new concept (friendly reminder: this is your actual job). I have a lot of thoughts on the rationale of a predictable learning environment, but alas those are for another day.
So this may not be the newest piece of tech to enhance lesson planning. But it’s sturdy and reliable and if you struggle with planning lessons consistently - then this is what you should be doing.