One of the formative assessments I learned about earlier in the year was “Two Stars and a Wish”.  I would like to take a quick breather and look back at the happenings of the past week and spend some time appreciating what I see through the lens of Stars and Wishes.  Perhaps I might like this method of self-reflection:  it’s definitely more structured than my typical stream-of-conscious style!  For now, I shall examine an art lesson that I attempted Friday morning.

* * * * *

A brief introduction:  Draw me a Song — create a visually appealing piece of art using song lyrics as inspiration.  The typography of the lyrics can be modified and incorporated into the illustration.  The plan was for the students to be inspired and create magic with oil pastels (they’ve been using pencil crayons for the longest time).  Well… that’s not what happened:

• The Wi-Fi was extremely slow (Murphy’s Law at its finest)
  • Fortunately, I had pre-downloaded a Somewhere Over the Rainbow YouTube video (with lyrics) onto my laptop the night prior (foreseeing something like this)
  • So far so good — I showed the students the examples and they were quite intriqued
• All right, kids… pick your own songs, write the lyrics down!
  • … *record scratch*
  • PROBLEM #1 — many students did not even remember the name of the song they wanted to use, much less the lyrics
  • PROBLEM #2 – many students could not think of a song to use and were stuck… that lead to
    • PROBLEM #3 – I suggested they try with a “nursery rhyme”, which the students balked at… I had one student choose the ABCs, albeit with a exasperated smile on her face
• All this culminated in kids losing direction, losing focus, and becoming distracted and off-task… I tried to rein them back in, but it was too late — they lost half an hour, and even then, it wasn’t a solid 40 minutes spent working:  I had to constantly quiet the room down and send kids back to their seats
  • Question to self — why do you keep pacing around the room?  It doesn’t really serve a purpose — maybe the kids would be more on-task if they didn’t have to worry about a teacher peering over their shoulder all the time…

OKAY!  Now we’re ready for 2 stars and a wish

STAR #1 – STRONG START

• We can say that I had the students’ attention.  I lost them temporarily when I allowed some of them to sing along with the song, but they came back when I showed the samples
  • A side note — I opened myself up for randomness when I allowed singing… that gave a few of the students to “take advantage” and exhibit some off-task, silly behaviour.  Shouldn’t give them those opportunities..

STAR #2 – VISIBLE PRESENCE

• While the students did get energetic and certain individuals began visiting their friends across the room, they all listened whenever I called for quiet
  • Room for improvement — instead of requesting compliance, demanding compliance; I’m too lenient and permissive and need to hold them to higher standards

WISH – BETTER PLANNING

• I’ll be first to admit that this is one aspect of my teaching that I’m finding quite a few issues with.  A lot of the time I have these ideas, but neglect to consider how they will pan out.  I am very good at accounting for technological issues… I need to take that transferable skill and apply it to the more important “issues” — how to proactively reduce off-task behaviour and ensure all students develop the skills/knowledge they need to succeed in their assigned task?  Planning, planning, planning…

Moving forward, I tried planning next week’s HACE lesson from this perspective.  I assumed that those rambunctious students will seek to entertain themselves, and that students would get confused and not know how to proceed.  The end result is an airtight activity that is guided from beginning to end… strangely enough, prior to adopting this mindset I had always felt somewhat uncomfortable with too rigid a lesson or activity plan (I wanted to leave room for spontaneity).  Now… it feels so natural — perhaps I needed that change of perspective in order to truly appreciate why certain lessons required stricter frameworks?

I used an analogy to explain the idea to a colleague before… “sometimes, direct instruction is required.  A supervisor will want to tell new employees (at least, initially) exactly what to do and how to do it.  It won’t be until after the new employee has demonstrated some improvement and/or efficiency that the supervisor will begin to release responsibility back to the new employee.  What supervisor would tell their employee to ‘do your best’ without even a basic list of expectations, then chastise him for not performing to par?”

It’s high time I started following my own advice.