Trust the Process

I always used to hear the words from a mentor, "Trust the process, Haley. Be patient and stop trying to rush it." 

I am not going to lie to you and tell you that I always trust now or am always patient. But by golly, I now know how to trust the process and be patient. Things always seem to work out the way they were meant to be and most of the time, even better than when I tried to control it all and figure it out myself. 

While this blog post is about trusting the process of your life, I connected it to trusting the process of learning with MyView! Ugh. What a messy process that has been for all of us, am I right? 

Read all about 4 ways that you can trust the process of what MyView is trying to do when teaching our kids. 

1) Be resilient. "If you believe that everything is in your control, drop that story now. Change is the only constant. Resilient people surrender to uncertainty. They understand that we have very little control over what happens in life, and by adopting this mindset, they have trust in the process."

2) Embrace The Unknown "Humans dislike ambiguity of any kind. Anything that doesn’t feel safe, stable, and comfortable feels dangerous. The fact of the matter is that we don’t know what life will throw us, but if we embrace the unknown and get comfortable being uncomfortable, we will be better prepared for anything." 

3) Focus on your Purpose "Trusting the process is about accepting that hardships will happen along your journey to success, but having confidence that every lesson is bringing you one step closer to fulfilling your purpose in life. Whether you want to believe it or not, failure is a good thing. It is proof that you are trying." You are here so kids learn how to read and write and that is SO very important! 

4) Practice Gratitude "Feeling grateful has been associated with less frequent negative emotions and thoughts, more frequent positive emotions and thoughts, greater meaning in life, more positive coping, a greater appreciation of life." I am sure there are some things that are going right with MyView. Celebrate them! 

 How are you going to trust the process? Trust me when I say, once you do, you will be a lot happier! :) 

MyView Learning Letter #26-Engagement

One of the biggest things I hear with MyView is that it is not engaging. I am just going to put my opinion out there to start and get it over with. I do not believe engagement equals fun. Engagement means participation. Kids should participate and engage in their learning. Sometimes, their participation can be super fun, but fun isn't the goal. Participation is the goal so kids learn. 

Alright. Now that is out of the way, let's talk about how we ENGAGE kids in THEIR learning! I kept the "Archerisms" here because two of them relate to engagement. The first is that learning is not a spectator sport. You should not be doing all the work. Yeah, you have to model, but that should be a small part of your lesson. The rest is kids working WITH you and you giving feedback on how they are thinking and doing and learning. If at the end of your lesson, you feel you worked and talked more than the kids, it's time to reflect on how you could have them participate more. 

The second is that everyone does everything. There are times where one student is talking or writing or doing something. How could you have ALL students doing the work all the time? Could they ALL write on white boards? Could they turn and talk to a partner so they are all answering? 

Here is one quick strategy to help with both of these! 

Choral Practice (Give instructions then check for understanding.) This straegy also makes me think of Mirror from Whole Brain Teaching. 

1. Give instructions or share facts-

2. Students finish the teacher’s sentence, or repeat instructions, in unison to a teacher question, such as,

“The first vocabulary word is...it means..." 

Look for the next blog post where I present engagement, or participation, strategies for each Day's Routine! 

MyView Learning Letter #25 -Scaffolding Instruction

I know we have ALL felt how rigorous our new literacy curriculum is. The end result is going to be AMAZING for our students, but uffda. It's a lot right now in the messy middle. Here is a fantastic blog post from Timothy Shanahan on how to teach above a student's reading level. May it offer you some helpful tips as you scaffold for your students to help them achieve great things! 

In the meantime, let's talk about what scaffolding is. Scaffolding is what teachers do FIRST to help students. 

                             

Scaffolds don't stay forever. They are only there as long as a student needs them and the goal is for them to do things on their own.

Scaffolds also aren't complicated. Here are some quick ways to scaffold for student success. 

1) Model EXACTLY what kids need to do. 

2) Talk about what kids know about the topic BEFORE they learn it. 

3) Provide talk time. HAVE KIDS TURN AND TALK ABOUT WHAT THEY ARE LEARNING. 

4) Pre-teach the vocabulary. Thankfully, MyView does this for us. However, make sure you have images and time to talk about the word. 

5) Create anchor charts WITH the kids, otherwise it is just a poster and won't be as meaningful. 

6) Give kids wait time. Let them think. 

What scaffold are you going to try first? Which ones do you already use? 

Stay tuned for more information and tips on how to scaffold for student success as the year goes on.