When I sit down to make a unit or series of lesson plans, I ask myself two questions:
1. Is this going to engage my students?
2. Will it challenge my top 3 learners?
A staple of my classroom is that my students are afforded the opportunity to grade me and my lessons after every culminating experience, which typically tends to be an essay.
It kills me when they say that they were bored or that the content seemed “busy” and of little educational value.
I like giving my students this degree of voice because it keeps me on top of my game, but it also empowers them. It’s their class after all. They have a great stake in this, so I want to hear what they have to say.
Over the past couple of days, I’ve been sharing with you some stories about the group of teachers from Chicago that have enrolled in my Masterclass. They are running a summer institute for students that voluntarily come to school Monday through Friday from 8 a.m – 1 p.m. It’s a skill-building seminar in ELA to try to close some of the learning gaps created in covid.
We gave the students the appraisal rubric I use with my students when they critique me, my teaching, and my instructional units.
And the results weren’t good.
The work wasn’t engaging and it seemed busy for many.
Given that the students (8th – 12th) are learning how to write synthesis essays, we decided to meet them where they’re at. I suggested that we go pop-cultural. For the younger students, how about the following essential question: does SpongeBob Squarepants have any educational value for its intended age demographic? And for the older students – we tackled four unanswered and unresolved questions that loom at the end of Tiger King.
These kids were hooked. Not only is it high engagement, but it’s a challenging essay to write.
A staple in the Masterclass is this idea that teachers need to Bob Ross their instruction – meaning, that we need to provide students with plenty of exemplars and models – that we need to “paint” with them as they proceed through their own essays.
This concept often intrigues teachers, so what I’ve done is attach a link in this message for all of you to see a writing workshop for the Tiger King essay.
This is how we learn to model and teach the templates in the Masterclass.
Hopefully, you find it to be useful and possibly something your students would love to tackle this coming academic year.
If you like what you see and would like to learn more, know that I am offering my next Masterclass from July 12th – 16th. I’d love to work with you.
And if you have any questions or would like any further information, please reach out – maybe we could schedule a discovery call so that I could show you the full content of the course. Or, if you’d prefer, you can browse my webpage at www.teachinghow2write.com
Here’s the link to the Tiger King writing workshop:
https://share.sendspark.com/view/yhu8k6m98dskvgd5
Wishing you all the best as we do some happy teaching and happy writing!
Kristian
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