Have You Ever Taught Someone to Drive?
The true art of teaching lies in our ability to break down complex tasks and help students build the individual skills necessary to accomplish those tasks. A couple of years ago, I had my first experience teaching a teenager to drive a car. For my academically high-achieving daughter, this was perhaps the first time she really struggled to learn something new. This was a real life application of many individual skills, skills that needed to be automatic but were not yet automatic, skills that needed to be applied in an unpredictable environment with real consequences for error - check your mirror, check your speed, check the car ahead, don't follow too closely, watch for road signs, this lane is ending, check your speed, check your mirrors, you need to merge, check your blind spot, blinker on, don't break too fast, and so on. Let's just say it was many, many months (years?) before I could ride as a passenger and relax with my daughter at the wheel.
When we first started down this path, I wasn't prepared for the foundational level of skill I was going to have to directly teach for her to learn to drive. I started paying attention to my own driving - what are the things I do automatically that I don't even think about? How will I break down this complex task into individual skills? How will I explain them to her while she's on the road without distracting her? Very similar is the work we do every day with middle level students. We know full well they need support in developing automaticity in skills they will need to apply without warning in unpredictable environments. Luckily, mastering middle-level skills isn't quite the same as learning to drive a car, and we've established middle school as a low-stakes environment where students are free to take risks and fail forward.
So in this safe and controlled environment, we can support students by taking the extra step to apply our artful teaching practices and break down the complex skills needed for success. What kinds of skills do we want students completing automatically, effortlessly, without even thinking about it? What skills do we sometimes assume they are able to do, only to find once they're "out on the road" the skills aren't what we assumed they were?
If we can first establish some specific skill targets and then build that common approach building-wide, we will have the greatest possible impact on student success. The more students practice completing basic skills in the same ways, the more likely those skills become automatic. This isn't the first time I've mentioned Collective Teacher Efficacy or the need for common building strategies. Check out previous posts on Academic Vocabulary, Note-taking Strategies, and Somebody Wanted But So, and then see below for some already-in motion writing strategies we can leverage at Indian Hills for student success. These are not essay writing skills or even paragraph writing skills, but just the basics of answering questions intelligibly.
Asking Text-Dependent Questions?
This is one of those things we sometimes assume students know how to do. They read something, there are questions to be answered, and then they answer them in complete sentences. Our science teachers have long-since used the CER model to support students in writing their research conclusions, and it's a great model to use any time students need to cite evidence.
C: Claim
E: Evidence
R: Reasoning
Here is a great resource if you'd like to learn more about CER or post it in your classroom for reference. One thing we've noticed in using CER in English language arts and social studies classes is that sometimes students struggle with the Claim statement. A great approach to scaffolding even further for them is to break down that skill of restating and answering the question. Another model we've tried that provides this scaffold and is essentially the same as CER is the FACE strategy.
F: Flip the question
A: Answer it
C: Cite Evidence
E: Explain Evidence
Like FACE better? Here is a template if you'd like to post it for reference. There is power in choosing a common strategy, so we wouldn't want to overwhelm students with too many acronyms to remember. However, CER and FACE are so similar and so basic, they are worth adding to your toolbox. It helps the teacher to have those phrases and techniques in your head so that, in the moment, you have quick access to the explicit feedback students need to move them toward the target.
The last plug for these strategies is that anyone can use them, regardless of your personal comfort teaching writing. Many of our core teachers are already using CER, so an elective, math, or PE teacher can assign short answer questions knowing the expectations students have grown accustomed to. These are just a couple of the skills we want to be automatic for our students.
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