Strategies for Independent Learning

This week we talked all about the different strategies you can use for helping students be successful with independent learning. Some of these strategies will be successful for some but not others. In class on Wednesday we answered a bunch of questions in groups and we were asked to keep tally of how many times we participated and how many affirmations we gave. This is a great strategy to help those students who are quiet are are usually not involved, get involved! However, for me this was annoying. I felt like I had to make comments even when they weren't necessary and I felt like I was concentrated too much on making the tallies rather then being in the discussion. Like I said, some strategies will work better for others and we as teachers need to figure out what strategies work best for which students.

We also talked a bit about paraprofessionals. This was interesting for me to learn about because growing up there was never a paraprofessional in any of my classes so I loved hearing my classmates stories! Paraprofessionals can be a great resource in the classroom if you use them more as a co-teacher rather then a babysitter. The main thing we don't want is to have the students become completely dependent on their para, that they stop trying. We are the teacher of the classroom and we need to communicate with the paraprofessional and let them know what we want. It is our class, we make the rules. It might be awkward especially if they have been paraprofessionals for a long time, but it is still our class.