How Puzzles Teach Key Learning Skills

Puzzles are a great way to improve fine motor skills and enhance focus in our children. I've watched both my sons be motivated to complete puzzles - in an ever-increasingly independent capacity - with success and happiness. Whether at home with your own children or in a school-setting as an educator, try incorporating puzzles as a way of providing yet another authentic learning opportunity that will play on the kinesthetic/tactile learning skill sets.

Here's how to get started:

1. Choose a puzzle that you feel is just a little out of reach for your child. You should already have a good idea what they can handle - when it comes to an independent task and managing their level of attention - and aim just a little 'higher.'

2. Avoid the urge to jump in and help them with the puzzle when they're stuck. They will prevail and learn much more from the struggle and problem-solving skills, then the realization that you will step in whenever things become difficult.

3. Know when your support is genuinely needed. Now, in the previous tip, my intention is not to abandon the child in their greatest time of need. In fact, doing this will almost certainly lead to a complete 'shut down' and no chance of puzzles ever catching on as a 'fun' thing to do. Rather, gauge when the need for support and your collaborative efforts is required. By intervening at the right time, you are providing the scaffolding needed as an opportunity to develop their skills and comfort through the 'balanced model' of learning you are using (model=>shared=>guided=>independent).

4. Celebrate the finished product. Focus all your positive attention and energy on them when they triumphantly place that final piece and announce to the room that they did it! Take pictures, show other family members or classmates and showcase their incredible effort and success. This is their moment to shine!

5. Re-frame the puzzle challenge with a new twist. "Ok. Now that we know you can do this puzzle. How can you put it together this time, so it gets finished faster?" 

• What about starting with the outside border first? 
• What about starting by turning over all the pieces first, so they face up? 
• What if you chose the biggest objects in the puzzle and put them together first? 
• What if you chose a colour to begin with and only pieced together those pieces?

By having this guided conversation, you are modeling problem-solving strategies, goal setting, and possibly even, fostering meta-cognitive awareness.

At any rate, puzzles are a great way to reach children of all abilities in a way that supports independence and can help in the building of a positive self-concept. Your children, or even students, will love the opportunity to show their stuff and be successful.

Raising a Reader

Teaching the joy of reading and the magic of learning is, I feel, our greatest gift as educators. As a parent, I have been witness to incredible moments of disbelief and awe when it comes to my own 2 sons, Liam and Bryce. They are, indeed, sponges as the saying goes, and my wife and I have tried to instill in them a love of reading that will build a foundation of learning success.

On the weekend, we took a trip to the Barrie Public Library - one of their favourite things to do. My wife came across a storybook called "Bony Legs" and remembered it from her own childhood. She put it into the bag of goodies to be signed out and we were homeward bound. She read the story to our youngest son, Bryce, twice in the next few days.

Bryce has entered the "pre-reading" stage and is constantly asking to "read" to us - or his 5-year-old brother, Liam. He uses the pictures as evidence and describes what he sees to us. He offers reactions like, "this is the funny part," and "isn't that weird?" He has already learned to interact with the text, use its features to improve his understanding and to celebrate and share in his "reading" to truly enjoy the experience.

He proudly carries out this adventure and is so delighted with himself, when he has us as a captivated audience. What a terrific thing to be a part of.



So, how can we make sure that we are "raising readers" in a positive and supportive manner? Here's what I think...

1. Celebrate everything in the stages of reading as worthy of your attention and feedback. "Wow, that's such an interesting ending." "What do you think will happen next?" "How do you feel when you read to mommy and daddy?" "I really like how you used the pictures to figure out what's happening!"

2. Recognize the process of reading. It doesn't happen overnight, and therefore, should be constantly done and discussed in order to progress. Our future readers are "reading" their world far before they sound out words and vocalize sentence structures.

3. Reading is life. This is a skill and talent that will carry your son, daughter, or student throughout their lives. They will dramatically improve given attention, support, feedback and questions. Frame each response and comment you make as an opportunity for them to dazzle you. Don't be satisfied with one word answers, dig deeper and find out what they think just as much as you expect to hear what they know.  

In the end, this is one of the greatest journeys they will ever make...and you will hold their hand through it all and guide them into their potential for learning - and life.

How do you "raise" readers - whether your own children or students you teach? 

The Blogging Teacher: Setting Up Your Classroom Page

Blogs ("web logs") are an effective way to communicate with parents and the school community about the learning and events taking place in your classroom. As a teacher, using a blog page as a method of sharing news and information can be helpful to parents (and students) by allowing them access to these things online - rather than by paper handouts and agenda writing.

By customizing features of your blog page, you can ensure that this blog page functions just as you intended and does not bring more grief than good. This is my current classroom blog page (grade 8 class). This post will describe how to get started blogging as a teacher.

Here are some simple steps to creating and using blogs as a teacher (using blogger.com):

1. Create a "google account" if you do not already have one (http://blogger.com)

2. Once activated, choose "create blog" to initiate the blog.

3. Once you have chosen a web address, title and background - you are ready to blog!

4. As a communication tool for parents, you may want to enter the "Settings" area and change some of the default options. For example:

BASIC

* Change default so your blog is not added to the blogger listing

* Change default so search engines cannot find your blog

FORMATTING

* Change default in Timestamp format so the time posted is not shown - only the date (no one needs to know when you are posting to your blog)

COMMENTS

* Change default so "Hide" is chosen for comments

* Choose "Only members of this blog can comment" - that way you can email people that you would like to participate in your online blog experience by posting comments.

* Choose "Always moderate comments"

* Choose "word verification" needed.

PERMISSIONS

* If you share a classroom or would like another teacher to be able to post writing to your blog page, you can "Add Author" by sending them an email and requesting to be an author of your blog page.

5. In the "Design" area, you may wish to remove the "Followers" gadget which is included on your blog page by default. You may also wish to remove the "About Me" page if you would like to avoid needing to give a personal description of yourself on your site.

6. I would recommend adding the "Pages" gadget to your blog page which will allow you to add new pages that deal with different subjects or areas in an organized way (e.g. News, Student Assignments, Forms and Letters, Calendars). To do this, go into "Design" and click on the "Add a Gadget" option directly below the title header. Scroll down and choose the 4th option "Pages."

7. If you create your class calendars in Microsoft Publisher, you can add them to your class page by saving them in Publisher as a "jpeg" file not a .pub file. In your blog page options, choose "New Post" and find the "Add Image" icon at the top of the post and find where you saved your calendar as a .jpeg file. You can then alter the size and alignment. This is the same process if you want to add a picture from the internet into a blog post.

You now have a blog that is setup to communicate with parents. You may wish to send home a letter describing how you wish to use this internet resource. In this letter, you will definitely want to include the blog's web address, so parents know where to find it. If your school can link it to the school's webpage that is an even better way to directing traffic to your site.

If you have any questions about this process, please comment to this post and I will do my best to steer you in the right direction. Thanks and enjoy!

Ignoring Our Curriculum

A recent N.Y. Times article, "Let Kids Rule the School," describes how the Independent Project in a western Massachusetts school has shown the tremendous benefits of student-driven learning within an open-design educational model. Students in this program are required to map out their learning in a way that relinquishes teacher control and demands student facilitation. Teachers are accessed as experts and mentors in the learning process - not "key holders of curriculum knowledge."

This article addresses one possibility for a dramatic shift in our delivery of the current educational model. Giving students much broader definitions of grade expectations will allow them to participate more efficiently in their own learning. With so many point-by-point curriculum restraints, we cannot fully allow students to buy-in to the idea of being designers of their school day. Yet, no teacher can confidently abandon their carefully crafted units and classroom models to implement this kind of alternative programming approach, unless major changes take place to our educational framework.

Parents reading curriculum documents together with their children reflect a major shift in the accountability of a teacher - not to their self and administrator - but to families who access these legal resources in order to monitor how a teacher runs their class. How can we take the next step as 21st century educators, if we are constantly defending how we teach to an ever-informed community?

The only way is to ignore our curriculum.

The Ontario Curriculum should be a guideline. It should be a model of subject ideas - not a collection of required, restrictive topics. Give students the freedom to learn about what they want and have them link it to a curriculum framework that is more open and yielding. As a way of being accountable for their own educational decision-making, they will still need to conform to some sort of structure - but one that is not tied to assessment dates and reporting periods in a way that races through key ideas merely out of time constraints.

Learning is meaningful when socially-interactive and delivered in meaningful blocks of time. What could be more exciting to a student than coming to school with an idea that they want to learn more about and then being given the time and support to carry out that learning? They plan their approach. They monitor their own choice of peers for group work, evaluation and feedback. They choose the format and choice of technologies to best address their learning styles and multiple intelligences.

It is not until we take that first step into the dark that our students will finally light the way for us.


Thanks to Miss M. for another thought-provoking article to inspire the online dialogue.