Chapter 4

At school I am currently in the midst of observing teachers. As I read the Theory into Action guidelines on page 116, I found many strategies listed in this section on applying information processing that I have observed my staff doing in their classrooms. Many examples are listed below:

• Moving around the room, using gestures, and avoiding speaking in a monotone. A 6th grade reading teacher spoke in accents when discussing a novel about Hispanic Americans (she has a degree in Spanish).
• Beginning a lesson by asking a question that stimulates interest in the topic. A 7th grade reading intervention teacher presented a riddle at the beginning of class, the topic of which was related to the read aloud that followed. He also gave students a tip on how to use thinking strategies to solve the riddle.
• Note the information on the board in colored chalk. I included this example only because chalk boards no longer exist in our school. However many teachers utilized their SmartBoards to enhance their instruction. I was impressed that most teachers didn't use them only as glorified white boards.
• Have students work with partners to quiz each other. One of the 7th grade math teachers paired up students with their clock partners (student pairs preselected by an hour of the day prior to class). They were instructed to find equivalent decimals and exponents.
• On the following page in the textbook, I even found a questioning technique to help aid my discussion when I go into homerooms to discuss bullying prevention. At the end of my presentation, I have the two questions developed by Nancy Perry on page 117 to help students reflect on what they learned: "What did you learn about yourself as a student today?" and "What did you learn that you can do again and again and again?".

With these classroom observations, I would surmise that my staff's teaching philosophies primarily revolve around the cognitive view of learning. My view is that this approach is very appropriate for the middle school setting. Adolescents are starting to become aware of their own thinking and are able to think abstractly.

A question came up as I read the Point/Counterpoint sidebar on whether homework is a valuable use of time. How do leaders in a building get teachers to adopt practices that are proven effective yet not accepted by veteran educators because it is hard to change? Staff members in my building have attended conferences by Guskey, O'Connell and Wormeli, yet a few of them still do not employ what they know to be best practices. For example, points are still given to students for getting their parent letter signed and turned in at the beginning of the year. This is a distortion of their grade according to the experts listed above, and I couldn't agree more. As my kids start to enter school I hope their teachers use best practices in assessment and grading so I truly know how they are doing in the content areas.