Tune Up Your Teaching & Turn On Student Learning

Move From Common to Transformed Teaching & Learning in Your Classroom

Joann Jurchan, Chuck Downing

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781630471453
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

Two teaching experts offer methods for maximizing student comprehension in all areas of education—with extensive research and practical examples. All teachers want their students to think, learn, and understand. In this helpful guide, veteran educators Dr. JoAnn Jurchan and Dr. Chuck Downing examine what successful teachers are doing—and not doing—to achieve those goals. Often without realizing it, many teachers provide students ways to complete their assignments with minimal effort or comprehension. The problem is how to avoid the "TMI" trap—because Too Much Information can stifle critical thinking. Tune Up Your Teaching provides clear and detailed methods teachers can use to raise the level of both thinking and learning in their classrooms. Written in a conversational style, Jurchan and Downing use concrete examples in all core areas of education. To clarify critical points, the authors include "He Said She Said" dialogues providing insight into their thought process. Neither a "cookbook" nor a "one size fits all" solution, Tune Up Your Teaching instead describes a research-based process that can be personally tailored by any teacher to her or his situation.

Chapter 1

WHY WE WROTE THIS BOOK

WHO CARES? SERIOUSLY . . .

Chapter Overview - Knowledge Island

You begin your journey with us at the center island, Knowledge, from our map of the Transformation Islands. In this chapter, we provide you with our rationale for the book itself, an overview of the process we recommend for you to get the “most” out of your reading, and our list of the Seven Essential Questions you’ll be answering as you travel. We end Chapter 1 with some content, providing you with our definition of learning and a statement of our commitment to honor you and your career.

A Quote to Kickstart Your Thinking

I went to a training on inquiry learning that was eight sessions long over five months. Some time later, I started working on increasing the level of student responsibility for their learning in my classes. It wasn’t until I started deciding what changes to implement and implementing them that I realized I’d learned more about how to do inquiry by deciding and implementing than in all those hours of training.

R.W. - High School Teacher

If you have not read the Preface, please do it now before
reading any of the chapters. Information found there sets the
tone and provides necessary context for optimal understanding
of the rationale for much of the content of this book.

Purpose and Background for this Book

In our combined seventy-four years of teaching, we have witnessed myriad educational movements and trends come and go. Like all other teachers, we have been called upon and held responsible for effectively implementing new policies, programs, curricula, educational approaches, methods, and school structures. Depending on your teaching tenure, you might remember project-based learning, smaller learning communities (school within a school model, for example), the whole language approach, phonics, integrated math and science, or providing academic targets for students during lessons.

Some changes to the educational landscape have proven exciting and were truly transformational in nature. For example, the move away from tracking students by alleged ability levels was transformational. Tracking pigeonholed students—too often for their entire K-12 academic careers. Providing heterogeneous classes opened doors to higher education for thousands of learners.

Of course, some attempted changes have proven to be unsuccessful and ineffective . . . we’ll let you determine which of those changes you remember and in which category they fit.

There is, however, one cornerstone of the educational “building” that has not changed—the indispensable requirement that all students become ready to engage in meaningful and rigorous thinking. The high quality of this type of thinking compels students to be persistent—each one becoming an intellectual risk-taker, competent in the use of learning strategies and methods. Ultimately, students like these are characterized by intrinsic motivation, disciplined minds, and well-developed problem-solving skills—all necessary for “real world” achievement and life-long learning.

Our journey in writing this book has taken us back to the fundamentals of teaching and learning. As we dissected the teaching/learning process, we looked for specific scenarios, recognizable signposts, and GPS coordinate locations along the way. As we found indicators that helped emphasize strategic teacher and student choices and behaviors, two things became clear.

1. When those indicators were intentionally connected in classrooms, they generated outcomes that can be positioned along a continuum of passive to active learning and teacher dependent to student independent learning.

2. The more indicators present, the more active, student-dependent learning was present.

Finally, this book is closely associated with an interactive online interface² (www.engageinthinking.com) that provides a professional forum for educators at all grade levels and levels of experience³ to explore the practices and conditions that constrain or cultivate a learner’s ability to achieve excellence. Please visit the website often and add your knowledge to the base.

What You Will Find in Each Chapter

Each of the eight chapters in this book is structured similarly. Some more closely align to the model that follows than others, but all have the same components in roughly the same sequence.

All chapters begin with an Overview of the chapter’s content.

A Quotation from a practitioner or student that supports the chapter’s key components follows the Overview. Some students were in school at the time of publication of this book. Other students quoted are now successful members of a variety of professions. Some chapters have additional quotes that focus on specific topics.

A Discussion of pertinent educational theories and models is presented. This is the “meat” of the chapter.

Example of Transforming a Common Activity segments provide examples of application of a theory or model. These examples demonstrate one way that you can integrate and use the theory. In most chapters, the Example of Transforming a Common Activity segment starts with a Common Activity. This is a prompt of the same type that is common to multiple grade levels and disciplines. Typically, a prompt is presented using context or verbiage for three or four grade levels or disciplines.

Immediately following the Common Activity is a Transformed Activity. This is a redesign of the common version that improves engagement and rigor in thinking. Commentary on how to perform the transformation and how the redesigned activity improves the level of thinking is included.

The last component of these sections is a set of Teacher Notes for the Transformed Activity. These allow you to implement the lesson immediately, if you desire. You can also use the Commentary and Teacher Notes as “How To Guides” for developing your own activities—our ultimate goal for you.

One or more “He Said/She Said” dialogues (or “She Said/He Said,” depending on who initiates the dialog) between Dr. Jurchan and Dr. Downing are included. One side of each dialogue will emphasize the theory and models; the other will ask clarifying questions or offer alternative verbiage for describing or explaining a particular idea or concept. These are intended to do one of two things.

1. Spark your thinking about the concepts just previously presented.

2. Ask clarifying questions—perhaps similar to those you’ve been thinking of while reading.

You might have questions that we didn’t think of. We encourage you to take advantage of our online discussion board and begin dialogs of your own with us and other practitioners.

Recommended Process

After reading this chapter, your next step is to read The Analogy, Building Boats, which focuses on teaching, engagement, and learning. The chart that follows The Analogy is for you to fill in. Having worked with teachers for many years, we know that some/many/most of you may choose to “do...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Why You Should Read This Book (An Uncommon Foreword)
• Chapter 1 Why We Wrote this Book. Who Cares? Seriously . . .
• Chapter 2 But they need me, don’t they? Getting past the “sage on the stage” stage.
• Chapter 3 What Do I Have To Do . . . Stand on My Head and Spin to get Them Motivated? Accepting that you can’t motivate anyone long term.
• Chapter 4 Use YOUR Brain, Not Mine . . . Please. Helping students to want to think. It’s not simple . . . you have to be strategic.
• Chapter 5 You Can Do It! Implementing Success in Your Classroom.
• Chapter 6 Training Wheels Have Value, But They’re in the Way if You Know How to Ride a Bike. How to know when to take the training wheels off.
• Chapter 7 Let Go and Enjoy! Reaping the Benefits of Engaging in Thinking.
• Chapter 8 Outlined “Cliff Notes”© of this Book. Look here when you’re in a hurry!
• Index of Figures and Tables
• About the Authors
• Online Resources
• References