Beating the Tests with Power Reading, Questions and Questioning
Arming the young with the comprehension skills to wrestle with the tough questions and conundrums of life.
If you teach young ones to question and probe, you equip them to do well on all kinds of tests - state tests, classroom tests and the tests of life.
High scores on tests of comprehension and problem-solving can only be achieved when students are urged to think, figure things out and wrestle with tough questions.
This session will focus on strategies teachers can employ to nurture potent questioning skills and behaviors in their students from the earliest years all the way up to university and post graduate years.
As a practical matter, students need to be able to read between the lines, infer meaning, draw conclusions from disparate clues and avoid the traps of presumptive intelligence, bias and predisposition. They need these thinking skills to score well on increasingly tough school tests, but more importantly, they need these skills to score well on the increasingly baffling tests of life . . . how to vote? how to work? how to love? how to honor? how to respect? how to invent? how to understand? how to grow? how to adapt? how to sing? how to birth? how to pass it on?
Drill and practice combined with highly scripted lessons stressing patterns and prescriptions amount to mental robbery - setting low standards for disadvantaged students so they end up incapable of thought or success on demanding tests.
This approach contributes to high dropout and attrition rates - early school departures and millions of children left behind.
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Quality Teaching
Making Quality Teaching Real
How do we move past grand theory to effective practice?
The field of education is loaded with rhetoric and blather, but most teachers have little time, patience or energy to take on new burdens that are ill-defined and impractical. In many respects, teaching is a game of survival, but those who argue for increased quality are often remote from the concerns and realities of the classroom. Many of their recipes, prescriptions and models fail when the school bell
rings the start of day.
Pie in the sky does little to feed hungry children, fuel a change in
reading performance or improve the realities of classrooms.
In this seminar, Jamie McKenzie offers a very practical way of thinking about teacher quality that is rooted in practice and reality. He identifies a dozen key elements that a teacher can modify to nudge daily practice forward without any lurches, lunges and sacrifices. This is not about heroics or extreme measures. The emphasis is on simple, manageable techniques to reach a higher proportion of students at a higher level of performance. The main themes appeal to common sense and logic.
1. Increase your magic
2. Understand the young ones
3. Look for good routines
4. Avoid heroics
5. Take breaks - coast - rest - pace yourself
6. Ask for help, for ideas, for tricks
7. Question
8. Add one strategy each week
9. Focus
10. Project like a champion - Have faith
11. Lose weight - shed the nonsense
12. Eat well - feed yourself on good ideas
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