I know the adage about students rising to our expectations. I also know that the hard thing about expectations is that they can be culturally based. My biases, which I believe I am aware of, shape my behavior more often than I know.
So I am not doubting myself, but checking myself. Have I once again acted on bias unknowingly? What I am thinking about this morning wasn't big deal. Yesterday's lesson was quicker and better than I could have guessed or planned.
Before you warn me about looking a gift horse in the mouth, and I acknowledge a good lesson is something to be grateful for, I was surprised in my lesson yesterday and I want to know more about that.
This is the lesson. When I started class I honestly had no idea how long it would take. I knew I had just UNDER 45 minutes. (being a specials teacher is really the high hurdles of teaching, when I taught high school that was century running) So I told the teachers that this could take 2 class sessions.
I walked the kids through my expectations. We had used Hopscotch before so I did no instruction about the platform. There were a couple students who complained we were not using scratch. I love this because the next lesson is modeling 2 systems interacting and we will be doing that in Scratch. I asked the kids to sketch what they were doing to make as a rough draft on paper. This helps get students moving on the program because they know what they are trying to do.
It wasn't 10 TEN minutes before I had kids telling me they were done. So we checked the functionality, I suggested improvements and they went back to work. For the record, they nailed it the first time. They WERE done.
Some students needed 40 minutes and others needed 30, and everybody got something done.
I am still not sure if I set the bar too low. I was impressed by what they were able to do. I want success to be within reach of everyone and I want all kids to be engaged and challenged. Almost all of the done early kids went on to improve and revise or completely corrupt their program.
How do you hold yourself accountable? How do you check your expectations?
So I am not doubting myself, but checking myself. Have I once again acted on bias unknowingly? What I am thinking about this morning wasn't big deal. Yesterday's lesson was quicker and better than I could have guessed or planned.
This is the lesson. When I started class I honestly had no idea how long it would take. I knew I had just UNDER 45 minutes. (being a specials teacher is really the high hurdles of teaching, when I taught high school that was century running) So I told the teachers that this could take 2 class sessions.
I walked the kids through my expectations. We had used Hopscotch before so I did no instruction about the platform. There were a couple students who complained we were not using scratch. I love this because the next lesson is modeling 2 systems interacting and we will be doing that in Scratch. I asked the kids to sketch what they were doing to make as a rough draft on paper. This helps get students moving on the program because they know what they are trying to do.
It wasn't 10 TEN minutes before I had kids telling me they were done. So we checked the functionality, I suggested improvements and they went back to work. For the record, they nailed it the first time. They WERE done.
Some students needed 40 minutes and others needed 30, and everybody got something done.
I am still not sure if I set the bar too low. I was impressed by what they were able to do. I want success to be within reach of everyone and I want all kids to be engaged and challenged. Almost all of the done early kids went on to improve and revise or completely corrupt their program.
How do you hold yourself accountable? How do you check your expectations?
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