First Days of School - Increasing Student Learning and Achievement

According to Harry Wong there are three major characteristics of an effective teacher:

1. They have high expectations that all of their students will succeed.
2. They are extremely good classroom managers.
3. They know how to design lessons to help students reach mastery.

We have spent 2 months on having high expectations and classroom management.  The last two weeks of the MRVED update will focus on lesson mastery.

"If the student cannot demonstrate learning or achievement, the student has not failed - WE have failed the student."

Increase Student Learning

The million dollar question is how do we increase student learning?  If there was a silver bullet answer to that question, everyone would be doing it.  What we, as teachers, can do is increase the amount of time the students are working in our classroom.  The research shows that the person who does the work is the only one who learns.  Wong says if you were to walk by any classroom, who is doing the work?  The teacher!  No wonder why teachers are so tired at the end of the day and students are so full of energy walking out the door.  The teacher has worked and the student has sat there doing nothing.  Wong states that according to research, most schools devote only 35% of their time to learning.  The other 65% is spent on "other" tasks.  If a business ran at 35% efficiency, it would be bankrupt!

It would be interesting to do a study in each of our MRVED schools and track actual learning time in the classroom.  I think we would all be astonished at the results.

To increase the amount of time the student works to learn:

• Have all assignments posted for students when they enter the room.
• Have "bell ringer" activities ready.
• Teach procedures and routines to minimize interruptions and maximize learning time.
• Constantly monitor students to keep them on task.

An hour is an hour and you will never get more than 60 minutes out of it, but you do have control over how you spend that 60 minutes.  Take a day or two and track actual time on learning in your classroom and I bet you will be amazed!