Miracles Can Happen

A miracle has happened. In all honesty I am so grateful that we have observations. At first they scared me, but now it has been such a huge blessing and has allowed me to grow so much as a teacher. In my lesson where I was observed yesterday on limericks, one of the suggestions was to not use so many open ended questions such as, "Sound good?" or "Okay?" or "Does that make sense?" or even "Who wouldn't want that?" Word of advice, if you want children shouting out "NO!" during a lesson just ask, "Don't you all like to be happy?" Apparently they don't. But here is the thing, obviously every one wants to be happy. This is not the issue. This issue is if you give kids an opportunity to be sassy at this age, guess what? They will be. As a person, I would probably laugh, as a teacher, it disrupts class, the lesson, and the momentem. Too many children call out when this happens. I knew I needed to change this right away. So I did. Today. And what a glorious day it was. We learned about writing a good hook today, and the one person that did call out (who usually does, despite the question I ask), I made sure to remind the students that we give points to those sitting quietly and raising their hands. This was not the miracle. Me not asking these open ended questions was not the miracle. The results were what were so miraculous. There was active participation, the students were listening to each other, everyone was on task, students knew what they were supposed to be doing, because instead of asking, "Sound good?" I ask Audrey or Lexi or Ben to tell me what we are doing. And they do. And they know exactly what is expected. Miraculous.