Chapter 6--Building Thinking Classrooms

 How tasks are given

In rereading this chapter, I am finding that Covid restrictions are making giving tasks difficult. Students are in cohorts in the classroom and are already seated at their desks when I come in. Ergo, I am always delivering instructions with them sitting in desks. I can see that putting them in groups first, then giving instructions may be a way to deal with this. I gave it a try this week and it does seem to get the energy flowing faster. 

I still feel like I am talking too much before setting them to work, but it is often announcement type things and not instructions. Again, I'm thinking I am going to have to move this type of talking to the end of the class. I am really going to have to work on better time management strategies. My students are doing such great things at the white boards that I am loathe to make them go sit back down too soon and often let them work up until the bell. I am going to try to have a hard deadline of 10 minutes left in class to do consolidation and any announcements. It may not be enough, but that will be my starting point. So now I notice that Liljedahl says that you can have other business before starting the lesson as long as you delineate when the lesson starts. I still feel like the announcement portion takes energy from the room and I will experiment with doing "business" at the end of the class. 

I have also occasionally used problems from their Eureka math program or practice quizzes as resources for group tasks. Some observations about that: The Eureka math tasks are usually sequenced very well--they are already set up for the students to work on them using the "workshop" model. If I give them, for example, page 36: 1-20 and say work on those problems, they will tend to spend time clustering around a book on a desk to read the problem, then do it on the board. They can see there is a certain "falseness" about writing the problem on the board to do it, then writing it in the book. If I use the Eureka problems, but present them by writing them on the whiteboard as needed for the groups to see, the falseness goes away. I think I will have to be careful about not overusing the use-the-book method as I think it would lead to loss of enthusiasm on the part of the students.  The same thing goes for a practice quiz--I think the best way to do it is to present a sequence of review problems for groups to work on at the boards as if I had just made them up off the top of my head, then give them the practice quiz towards the end so they can have a paper version to use for review.