Anchor It!
"How can we make this simpler? Will our kids EVER get there? There are SO many holes!" these are a few of the things that have been running through our minds this year with the new Math standards. R-H is always up for a challenge...and this one seems to be a VERY large one! I have been racking my brain the past few weeks for something that may help our kids begin to understand at the level of these new standards (not to mention THEN taking them to the level of the process standards!). I started to think about things in my life that have been challenging and what has helped me succeed in those encounters. I wanted to learn how to make my husband's family's famous home-made pumpkin rolls. I had to develop lessons with the process standards. Even when I was stuck teaching my son how to play the new, very complicated game my mom bought him. All of these things I eventually figured out, despite the initial thought that I would never get there. In fact, these are all things I can now do pretty quickly and even without a lot of extra time or thought now. How did I get there? Well, now that I think about it: it was all through an ANCHOR of some sort. A recipe, a flow chart, an instruction manual, or any other kind of “cheat sheet” that allowed me to get through it the first few times and then eventually learn how to do it independently. I wonder if we provided our kids some “ANCHORS” if it would help them rise to the challenge of the new standards? What if they had a poster that was created during the mini-lesson, or a chart in the room that we added new tools to as they were introduced, or even a Math journal where we helped them create their own manuals to refer to? We could even include our "concrete, pictorial and abstract" right there on the poster. Possibly it could be the model part of the mini-lesson (I do), or they could create posters in their groups during the learning application (we do), or what if we could even have them create something in their journals as a closure (you do). Which ever piece we use it for, I feel that the key will be that we come back to it and add pieces as we learn more and that we promote for the kids to actually USE it, over and over as a scaffold until they are ready for independence. Would it make it easier? I really don’t know the answer for sure, but based on my personal research I don’t think it would hurt! Maybe it’s worth a shot to give them some accessible “anchors” to help them teach themselves how to meet their challenges. As I was writing this post, I started noticing so many ANCHORS in classrooms around our building and thought it may be helpful to share some ideas:
