The Student Becomes the Teacher

Hey folks,

I mean this quite literally! This is an extension of the updates post that appears a bit lower down.

If you were at the back-to-school-night, you have an idea of how I run my Reading class. I like to use shorter stories rather than whole novels in the beginning of the year, and with each story, focus on specific reading skills. Then, at the end of that story (normally 6-8 school days) students take a general comprehension quiz with an extended written response related to the reading skill we worked on.

We just finished reading an excerpt from Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, focusing more specifically on character traits. The class took their quiz today and wrote their extended responses, and I will hopefully have those graded soon.

But here's the cool part! Our class will be partnering with Mrs. Sullivan's 2nd grade class this year for book buddies every Friday. During our half hour with the little ones, OUR students are going to TEACH the 2nd grade students about character traits! The class seemed pretty excited about it when I told them today...because for the next two days, they are going to apply their skills with character traits to help design a real lesson that they will then teach to the 2nd graders...so they are literally going to plan, implement, and reflect on their lesson like a teacher does!

The best part about doing this is, you learn way more if you can teach something. If you can learn a skill, and then teach it to someone else, that really shows that you have a clear understanding of that skill. I'm excited for the kids to show me what they know, and benefit the 2nd graders along the way!

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Don't forget to answer the Tuesday Trivia, as well as check out the other updates, cassini pictures, and the HST pictures in the previous post!

Mr. C