The Middle Is What Matters

For the past several years, many of us have been involved in Literacy or Numeracy pathways.  We have spent time creating pre-and post assessments and have tracked our students progress along the way.  We moderated marked, and have learned new high yield strategies to help our struggling students improve.  From all of this, the most important lesson we have learned is that what you do in the middle (between the pre-and the post) is what makes the difference for your students.

At Wexford the Grade 1 and 1/2 teachers spent their PLC time together looking at Measurement.  Measurement is a big strand, and involves many different concepts.  Some concepts, such as area and perimeter and volume and capacity are more "meaty" than others such as time.  The planning session started by breaking down the strand into chunks based on what was to be taught.  Those chunks were:  time/temperature, length/height, area and capacity/mass.  From there, they then listed what knowledge the students would demonstrate for each heading based on the curriculum.  This allowed them to focus in on what "chunk" had more expectations and knowledge needed.

From there they then took out the Q-Chart and created rich tasks for their students to do during the unit.  Having the Q-Chart there really helped to open up the questions and allowed them to think of deeper questions to ask their students to really help them show their abilities in all four areas of the achievement chart.

Knowing that communication is an area that their students struggle with, they also created a chart that they will use with their students to help them become better at answering questions.  This chart is a great way to get students to reflect on their learning and helps them to ensure that they have a complete answer.  Plus, it allows for the teachers to give easy descriptive feedback to the students because they can give the students concrete (and visual) examples of what to do in order to improve their answers.