Make It Fresh! Mix It Up!

Connie Fredinburg
Oct 25, 2011

How are LEARNING-FOCUSED lessons like salad? To be consistent and pervasive, you need them both every day and they should be fresh. The ingredients need to be well-mixed, too. Although you may love Caesar salad, you wouldn't want it every day. The same holds true when choosing activities for LEARNING-FOCUSED lessons.

When you are using graphic organizers, be mindful of the following:

1) is the organizer the best fit for the subject matter?
2) have you chosen an organizer, or had the students create one, that hasn't been used over and over again in our classes?

Frayer diagrams can be wonderful tools, but, if your students have done them every day during the week and in several different classes as well, the Frayers can become less effective today than they were the previous days. Consider other research-based strategies for teaching vocabulary. Maybe you could use a word grid which may include a column for a non-verbal representation of the word, a word map, or even write jeopardy questions for a vocabulary word (see pages 8, and 11, in the Using Student Learning Maps chapter of the LEARNING-FOCUSED Strategies: Transforming the Standards into Learning book).Today may be the day to play a game with vocabulary, instead of using an organizer.Being able to anticipate what would work best with students on a given day takes some time to cultivate, but is well worth your efforts.

For collaborative pairs to be most effective, you must vary the approaches as well.One day shared reading and quick writes may work well, but students won't respond to this strategy every day, especially in situations that demand another approach.Sometimes students will respond to sharing with different partners.Students also like to get up and move - those, who have become lethargic during the day will spark anew and again become successful learners.

Sometimes varying how you give information to students will make the day's salad seem fresh and different.For example, when you give students a rubric for a particular assignment, vary the labels on the rubric to spark student interest.Perhaps, instead of labeling a rubric on a project for social studies with a simple "good"," better", "best" approach, label it humorously. For example, when creating a rubric for the culminating activity on a unit covering the branches of government, you might label your rubric "Page in the House", "Junior Senator" and "President of the U.S.". This labeling may seem trivial, but taking the time to make the rubric stand out for the students might make a difference in how well they complete the projects.

You know that LEARNING-FOCUSED provides a framework for delivering exemplary lessons to students, and you also know that LEARNING-FOCUSED believes that you should "Adapt, Don't Adopt how you deliver the strategies within the framework. With this knowledge in mind, you can create a different delicious salad for each and every lesson.