Teachers are busy. And God forbid if you are a coach. You have time for nothing. Lesson planning - the very thing that guides most of your day - often gets put aside. Ironic: you spend most of your day in front of the kids teaching your guts out, yet the amount of time spent on other things in the PLC, planning time, staff development, data meetings, and administrative activities often insure that you won't have ANY time to plan at all. And if the lesson design requires that you make something to go with the lesson...out of luck. Not happening. (At least that was what it was like for me. Or I stayed there until 8 or 9 each night.)
Teachers have been asking if there is a solution. When I coach in their classrooms, they ask me - how did you know how to come up with that on the fly? The trick is knowing some basic routines and structures that you can plug in and adapt to anything. Marzano talks about the different levels a teacher goes through in learning about and using instructional strategies. The point he makes is that teachers can get to the level of innovation: "At this level, the teacher is so familiar with the strategy that he or she has adapted it to meet specific student needs." This is true in general lesson planning as well. Teachers can adapt some general structures to fit seamlessly into their curriculum and presentation with little additional preparation.
So...I'm collecting and thinking about where we could begin. Over time, I'll post an entry that begins with ELS and a description of the category and use in the title of the blog. Let me know how they work.
Your Fan,
Shona
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