Beginning Teaching... What will help for a great start?
Notes from Tom Sherrington's 'Five Strategies for a great start' and more from Tash
Tom Sherrington: Five strategies for a great start - YouTube
1. Establish your expectations.
What will you expectations be?
How will you communicate this to your students and families?
-reinforce
-redirect
Some links below to help you come up with some ideas:
Establishing classroom expectations - YouTube
Bayley on Behaviour: Establishing the ground rules (Teachers TV) - YouTube
2. Signal, pause and insist
What will your signal be to your students?
How will you rehearse the signal with your group of students?
Give the signal
Pause
Insist
Some links below to help you come up with some ideas:
Teacher Toolkit: Nonverbal Signals - YouTube
ULBGC Attention Getter Video - YouTube
Cheers! with Dr. Jean Feldman - YouTube
3. Cold Calling> Questioning and Feedback
Steps:
Ask the class the question
Give thinking time
Select someone to respond (popsticks for accountability)
Respond to the answers
Select another student and respond again
Whiteboard instruction:
Hover it
Delete it
3,2,1 Showdown
Park it
Some links that will support you with ideas:
Schoolwide Structures for Checking for Understanding - YouTube
4. Think, Pair, Share
Steps:
i. Establish talk partners for every student
ii. Set the question with a goal and a timeframe
iii. Build in thinking time
iv. Circulate to listen as pairs are talking
v. Use cold call to sample pairs' responses
Some links that will support you with ideas:
Using Think, Pair, Share—Primary - YouTube
Classroom Protocols in Action: Think-Pair-Share - YouTube
5. Check for Understanding
Cold call, asking what, not if
Probe with short dialogue
Follow-up with more checking dialogues
Explore differences and details
Re-teach, defer or move on
Some links that will support you with ideas:
Check for understanding - YouTube
*Remember to surround yourself with positive like minded teachers and seek out your mentors and go and watch expert teachers!