Summertime....and Professional Reading

A colleague told me about The EduProtocol Field Guide by Marlene Hebern and Jon Corippo.  Have you ever read a book that just made sense?

Eduprotocols are simply templates that you can use for any subject, making sure that your kids are focused on content and not on the process.  The format stays consistent while the content changes.

Did you ever try something in your classroom only to find that the kids didn't know how to do "the thing"?  By the time you'd explained how to do it, they'd gotten so wrapped up in doing the "thing" that they'd lost what they were actually supposed to learn?   At the beginning of the year, I feel that way about interactive notebooks!  Although I like them,  I'm always a bit stunned because sooo much time is spent getting better with scissors!  Which is NOT the point of interactive notebooks.

This book is teaching me to use protocols as a way to provide parameters in my classroom.  Once  protocols are set up, it allows students to move rapidly to the content and not focus so much on how to master the task.  And that takes so much less time!

One of the ideas I'm planning to use is to introduce the Frayer Model for a Getting to Know You activity in the first days of school.   Kids get to know each other better and you've taught them about a model that you can use all year long with any content.  Here's one example of it, which you can click here for it.  (It's part of a Back to School with Movement product you can find here on TpT.

Some of you may already being doing that, but, especially in the upper grades, I like to mix things up a fair amount to keep kids engaged.  This book suggests inserting some familiar strategies so that kids can focus on the learning.  You'll feel more time-efficient and your students will feel a greater sense of success about what they're learning.

The book is filled with suggestions and has a website where people share things they've tried.  It's where I got the idea for the reading game I played with my students in the last few weeks of school.  You can read about that here.

I'll keep posting ideas as they strike me, but for now, there is some good food for thought in this book.  I'd recommend it if you're looking for specific ideas on ways to set things up in your classroom next year.

With a heart of gratitude,