Classroom Snapshots

One of my goals for this blog is to help you see what is going on in your child's classroom when you aren't there.  As a mom who worked full time for most of my daughter's childhood, I know we can't all be (or even want to be) parent volunteers.  But that leaves your child's classroom a mystery.  All we have to fall back on is our own experiences.  Most of those were very traditional with desks in rows, textbooks, workbooks, and not much hands on. 
Well, times have changed.  Thank goodness, right?!  That doesn't mean rows, textbooks and workbooks are bad.  It just means we know A LOT more about how we learn and about how children's brains develop.  Just like there have been a lot of advancements in medical science and technology in the 18 years or so since you were in elementary school, there have been a lot of advancements in the world of education.   
I'd like to share classroom snapshots with you so you can get an idea of the kinds of teaching we are  doing and the high expectations on your children.  That's another thing that's changed.  Students are expected to work much harder even in elementary school than we were.  Well. .. come see for yourself. 
 This video features my alma mater, Miami University's Ohio Writing Project working with a local school district to offer professional development to teachers to improve writing instruction.   http://miamioh.edu/features/global/writing-project/index.html

Another classroom snapshot features Social Studies.  There are actually several short videos of a 3rd grade classroom.  In this video at the beginning notice the talk about the "learning target."  That is one of the recent changes.  The goal is to help students understand the point of the lesson and get their brains ready to learn by telling them our goal or target for the lesson.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3j4QuFMCl4&list=UU-SFEP4_ZxSqlPGIKZjv0Sw
I THINK this will then flow into the other segments.  If not, they will be on the right and you can click on them.  In this segment you will see 3rd Graders looking at photos using Historical Thinking or the Reading Like a Historian Approach.  This will give you an idea of the type of instruction we are doing in Social Studies. We are trying to give even our youngest students primary sources - documents, photos, letters, paintings, etc. from the time period in history being studied.  Then we are teaching them to "think like a historian."
 This means we source  the document - asking who made it or is in it, where was it made, when, and why?  Next we contextualize a photo or document to make sure students understand what was happening in this time in history.  Do they have the background knowledge needed to understand the document?  After we have laid the foundation we do what is called close reading.  That means we read critically, analyzing and studying the picture or document.  This requires students to be able to read, understand, think, compare, contrast, analyze.  If you have the time to watch the video you will be amazed at the deep thinking these 3rd graders are doing!  Finally, we teach students not to take sources for granted.  We teach them to be analytical.  We introduce them to other sources to see if we can corroborate, confirm or give support to the first source or disprove it.  Students are also asked to support their thinking using the evidence from the document. 

Aren't you even more proud of your child knowing the kind of work s/he is doing all day?  :)