Advancing the Vision 3-23

Review from Last Week: Mid-Course Corrections. In the last blog I focused on mid-course corrections. Rutherford specifically names the following mid-course corrections as options to choose rom after the overt response is implemented: Practice, Reteach, Abandon, Move on, Extend, and Connect. Understanding these options is a good first step in being strategic after implementing overt responses effectively. Descriptions of each strategy can be found here.

Careful planning is critical when planning for overt responses and mid-course corrections. 2nd and 3rd grade teams are killing it with their learning target planning! Check out how they think through which strategies they are going to use...I love the detail they put in the instructional strategies and "study" sections. They carefully think through how students will both learn and show their understanding of the learning target!

What’s Next: Based on walkthrough data and what I am seeing in observations and lesson plans, I think it would benefit us to camp out in mid-course corrections for a bit and dig a little deeper. I am seeing lots of different examples of overt responses, but the "what comes next" is tougher to implement. Overt responses and mid-course corrections are the money strategies. With limited time before the end of school we must use time efficiently and effectively. Implementing Overt-Responses and then allowing the results to guide our next steps helps us not to keep teaching the same thing when the kids have "gotten it" or plowing through a lesson when students have clearly not "gotten it."

So…now what? Let's take a look at a popular tool for overt responses--white boards. White boards are awesome! Fairly inexpensive, easy to implement, quick, effective.

Check out the use of white boards for overt responses in Ms. Hay's class.




The way that Ms Hay implemented overt responses in this lesson was absolutely BRILLIANT. She planned out each question so that they PERFECTLY matched the learning target which ensured that students were showing their understanding in ways that truly proved their understanding of all three parts of the learning target. Not once did students raise their hands to respond to any of her questions!! This gave her at least 50% overt engagement at all times. She also gave students chances to provide verbal and written responses in groups then independently. The variety of opportunities were CRITICAL for her class because she has a student who is almost nonverbal. This student would never raise her hand, yet was engaged in the lesson because she could respond on a white board.

So let's say you use use white boards in a math lesson to have students work a problem. When all but one student gets the correct answer do you reteach to the whole class or group? If you reteach to the one, what do you do next with the rest? Have them complete another problem, worksheet, or exit slip on the same types of problems they have already shown mastery of? Have you tried the Rutherford strategies of connecting, extending or moving on? Going further, if you find that every time you implement a strategy for overt responses or provide a formative assessment, most students are getting it correct, could it be that there were some students that already had mastery of that target before you taught it or that the target was perhaps not as rigorous as it could have been?

What to Expect When You Are a Teacher at Paint Lick:  

You should be able to… implement opportunities for overt responses and reflect on your teaching to decide where you need to spend more time planning mid-course corrections.

You probably will be able to… plan an option once a week to extend, connect, or move on with your whole class if your overt responses are telling you your kids "have it."

You may possibly be able to… set aside a time each day/week to extend, connect, and move students on with who mastered the learning target, while reteaching with students who need it.