I am currently stalking Christopher Lehman's webinars. I admit it. I have registered for three in the past month or so. I attended my first one and was hooked. I didn't actually get to watch my 2nd one, due to technology issues with Mac, but I did just spend and hour and a half of quality time with him this evening while he presented at UW Madison. It was rough, balancing preschoolers around dinner time while doing a webcast, but worth it nonetheless.
Here are some reasons I love him, and you should too.
He believes that the students need to be the ones doing the work. They need to read more. They need to work within the standards. He thinks that you only get good at things you do. That being said, he also thinks that we, as teachers, should try some of the tasks that we ask our students to do. We need to feel what they feel. We need to do what we ask of them.
Try reading that passage, but every time you get to the XXXX, don't try to figure it out. Just briefly pause and keep reading. Then ask yourself what it was about. Do it.
If children are reading grade level texts, where they only can read about 80% of the words with accuracy, that is about what you are going to get from them. You can plan the best, common core aligned lesson in the world, but it will not matter. If they are just guessing, they are not reading. That is what an excerpt of The Hunger Games looks like to someone who can only read 80% of it. Look at what the students can actually do. The best planned lesson in the world will fall short if the only one you can do the learning is the teacher.
He suggests that before you start a lesson, ask the kids to show you what they know about that subject. A pre-assessment of sorts... He talked about a teacher who handed the kids a booklet for writing workshop, and said "Show me how you write a story with a booklet." She then decided that although she could tell that the young child knew how to use a booklet, his pictures were so bad that he was unable to retell his own story. Instead of just going into the mini lessons in the book, she taught him how to draw people. It was not a mini lesson for the first grade unit, but that would help him retell his own stories, and that mattered more than following the lesson that was supposed to come next.
He says that he makes promises to the kids. THEY are his curriculum. They, not initiatives (like a program or the CCSS themselves) determine what he needs to teach. He said in times of great change, schools should focus on a few strengths and build upon those strengths. Focus on the kids, because they are our strength. The standards are about doing, and the ones that should be doing are the kids.
He also talked a lot about building our professional capital. We need more collaboration with each other. Every time we talk to a colleague about a student work sample, or a curricular decision, or assessment data, we are learning new things that we can use to support our kids. We are a community together, figuring out our kids. He suggested that we use high quality curriculum materials that match the needs of our kids during this common core transition. If we then look at one or 2 pieces of student work, and revise what comes next in those materials, we are building our curriculum around our kids.
I have many, many more things to say about Christopher Lehman, and close reading in general, but that is all I have to say tonight. :)
