New Year, New Goals

Three Easy Tips to Jumpstart your Workshop this Semester

There's something about a new calendar year that begs us to reflect on the work we have done and find ways to do it better for the remainder of the school year. There are so many directions our reflections can take us. If you are using the workshop model, thinking about pacing, tools, and transference can be a great place to begin when jumpstarting the second half of the year. 

Tip #1: Pick Up the Pace

As teachers, we have the desire to ensure that all of our students are understanding the content that we are teaching. We bend over backwards to make sure that every child is not left behind. But sometimes, this comes with the unintended side effect that we move too slowly through a unit causing us and our students to lose steam. Everyone becomes tired of the work and growth can slow to a crawl.

To ratchet up the pace of your units, set a goal to finish the work in no more than 4-6 weeks. The beautiful thing about workshop teaching is that the work that is covered in every unit is cyclical. You return to the big ideas of what makes powerful readers and writers (mathematicians, scientists, etc). The embedded work of conferring also ensures that all students are getting the strategies and concepts that they need (and this work is what has the most impact on moving your students forward in their thinking). 

Here are some actionable steps to get you started teaching at a faster pace:

• Set a hard ending date for your unit and commit to keeping it there. Make an agreement with your team that everyone will wrap up on the agreed upon date (no later) 
• Pace out your unit using a calendar that shows you not only an overall view of the unit, but maps out the big ideas of each day (see picture below) 
• Create a goal for the unit. Minilessons will cover several ideas around a unit of study. When making a goal or focus of your work, you can decide which lessons to move through more quickly, and on which ones you will spend more time

A unit map can help you stay on track with pacing

Tip #2: Ground the Work with Checklists

Many instructional units are built around the expectation that students have the background knowledge of previous units or grade levels. This means, when it comes to the flow of the sessions, there may not be an explicit lesson on an element of a checklist because it was taught earlier. So if you find yourself wondering why a strategy seems to be missing, you could set a goal of starting the unit by grounding your work in one of the greatest tools, the checklist. 

Here are some actionable steps that can get you started with this work:

• Build in a "Day Zero" to the unit. On this day, walk students through the expectations of the checklist and have them look at student samples that represents the work they will be doing
• Create teaching tools based upon the checklist. These tools will be your best teaching partner when conferring and leading small groups
• When looking at student work, identify any holes that you see from the checklist. If 50% or more of your class has a common need, create a minilesson to fill the gap if there is not one in the unit (and consider removing any minilessons that do not fit the overall needs of the class)

Teaching tools created from the checklist ensure foundational skills are in place for all students

Tip #3: Make Ideas Stick by Keeping Transference in Mind

How many times does the thought, “I taught you this already!”, run through your mind as you are working with students? It often seems like the work we are doing with our kids does not have the staying power that we are hoping for. When these thoughts start creeping up into our minds, one thing to consider is transference. That is reflecting on how we are wording the goals, strategies, and steps we are giving our students to make them transferable to ANY work, not just the piece of work they are currently working on. Teaching with a goal of transference in mind makes the work we do with our students sticky.

Here are some actionable steps to get you started teaching with transference in mind:

• When planning your minilesson, small group, or conference, be sure your teaching point is one that can be applied to multiple pieces of work and is not too specific to a single piece or task. Ask, “Is this teaching point one I can take beyond this day and apply it to again with another example? Could the student use this strategy beyond this piece of work?” If the answer is no, alter the wording to make it transferable
• Create a tool that will remind your students of the transferable work that you are asking them to do. This could be as simple as a sticky note with actionable steps they can follow independently
• Connect the work that was done in the previous unit or year to the current unit by reminding students of where they have come from, “Last year (or in the last unit) this work looked like ____, now we are adding on the next layer that looks like _____.”

A transferable teaching point can be carried across a unit

No matter the goals we have for ourselves, engaging in a reflection of how to make our teaching better for remainder of the year is the first step in achieving big results. Cheers to a great new year!