Guided Discovery

Guided Discovery is a process for introducing materials, opening areas in the classroom, and preparing children for different aspects of the curriculum. Guided discovery lessons may establish routines for whole-class or independent work. They may take thirty minutes or only ten.

Steps in a Guided Discovery

1. Introduction--The teacher and children name the material or room area in a way that excites the children and motivates them to explore.
2. Generating Ideas--The teacher helps children generate ideas for possible ways to use the material or room area, and the teacher demonstrates the uses.
3. Children Explore--Children try their hand at using the material or room area in different ways, with guidance and encouragement from the teacher.
4. Sharing--Children show their work to the group, pointing out features they would like others to notice. The audience offers comments.
5. Clean-up and Care of Material or Area--The teacher asks children to suggest and demonstrate good ways to clean up, establishing expectations for the care of classroom materials and areas.
6. Extensions--Children work in groups, pairs, or alone to continue exploring or discovering further uses of the material or room area.

Source: Teaching Children to Care by Ruth Sidney Charney

Common Behavior Challenges for Ages 8 and 9

Children may:

• feel a strong sense of gender identification
• avoid holding hands
• tease or exclude peers who continue activities with the opposite sex
• have awareness without empathy
• comfort someone when they are hurt or when they lose something, but be unaware when someone is being left out or is being treated differently
• call names and be cruel about appearance or mannerisms
• compare themselves and others, making strong judgements about what they themselves and others are good at and not good at
• want to avoid things that are hard or that they are not very good at
• say, "I hate art (math, writing, etc.)"
• choose the same activities more often
• feel the importance of peers and friendships
• begin cliques and clubs
• be very concerned about fairness
• show greater interest in telling secrets and gossip
• form class hierarchies in which some children dominate or have too much influence

Source: Teaching Children to Care by Ruth Sidney Charney (Appendix E)

Morning Meeting

Morning meeting is an essential element of the Responsive Classroom. Here is a link to an overview (If you would like to see the entire book, a few of us bought it at the conference):


https://www.stenhouse.com/pdfs/8909over.pdf

The Basic Tenets of the Responsive Classroom

1. The social curriculum is as important as the academic curriculum.
2. How children learn is as important as what children learn.
3. The greatest cognitive growth occurs through social interaction.
4. There is a set of social skills that children need to learn and practice in order to be successful. They form the acronym CARES- cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, self-control.
5. We must know our children individually, culturally, and developmentally.
6. Knowing the families of the children we teach is as important as knowing the children.
7. Teachers and administrators must model the social and academic skills that they wish to teach their students.

source: The Morning Meeting Book by Roxann Kriete