Wayside Teaching by Sara Davis Powell

Author:Sara Davis Powell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2018-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Component 9: Teach Skills That Help Students Become Autonomous, Not Anonymous

1. All kids are good at something. Young children often have not had enough life experiences to figure out what their particular “something” might be. Start with the interest surveys and build on what you discover. Develop a resource list of students who can help other students with activities. For instance, for a nine-week period, post a list of helpers.

• Drawing people helper: Danny

• Drawing animals helper: Angie

• Organizing my desk helper: Jermaine

• Jumping high helper: Raja

• Writing poems helper: Mary Catherine

• Learning spelling words helper: Marquita

The list can consist of just about anything your students feel they excel in. Encourage other students to ask for help in whatever areas students express competence. Then change the list and see who emerges as the new “expert” helpers.

This list of experts helped Tamika find special niches for her almost anonymous fourth graders. If they are known to be good at something, they will see more purpose in being in the classroom and will attain some measure of validity in the eyes of the other kids. This new-found “place” will help them become less anonymous, and more autonomous.

2. Give as many responsibilities as developmentally appropriate. Most elementary students love to have classroom jobs. Try letting them invent jobs. They will likely come up with some that adults would never think of. After all, someone has to water the plants, check on the day’s weather, empty the pencil sharpener, pass out the calculators, turn on the computers, and so on.

I will help my elementary learners become more autonomous and less anonymous by

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.