Look Who's Talking?

As you get to work tackling the goals with your kids and continue to write up your plans for the week, it is important to think about not only what you as the teacher are doing during the lesson, but what are the kids doing?

One "Teach Like a Champion" technique for getting started with this type of planning, or thinking about your planning is called Double Plan. Follow the link for a full description of the technique. With this technique, you not only think about the actions you'll take as the teacher, but you script in what the students will do and say at each point in the lesson. Doing this can really help you more intentionally create plans that effectively integrate student interaction and get the students doing more work and talking.

You also want to keep in mind the SIOP strategy of Chunk and Chew. During instruction, the ratio of teacher to student talk should be 10:2. This means for every 10 minutes of teacher talk the students should have 2 minutes to process the information or do something with the information they are learning. This might be talking with a partner, writing thoughts, briefly practicing the skill, etc. It does not need to be super involved, but there should be a back-and-forth between students and teacher during your lessons. 

Check out this blog post, "8 Ways Teachers Can Talk Less and Get Kids Talking More", for more ideas on how to incorporate student talk into your day. 

On a related note...

53 Ways to Check for Understanding - Check out this awesome list of formative assessments. There is so much more than "thumbs up / thumbs down" that you can do to see if your kids are getting it.