Review Season Is Upon Us

I'm neck deep in studying for my SPED certification (to broaden my impact as an educator).

As I embark upon this journey, I spend some of my weekends engaging in reading, studying, and practice testing. *Can we say "bo-oooring"? But I'm doing my best to "give it the old college try", literally, LOL!

Ironically, I stumbled across a section of my reading that was dedicated to laying out the skills for studying. As it talked about the nuances of organizing, processing information and remembering what is learned, I reminisced back to my transition between high school to college.

I vividly remembering coasting through my high school courses and graduating with honors. Then getting to college and taking my freshman/sophomore courses and thinking "I must be dumb" because nobody told me how hard it is in these college streets! I had ZERO (count them) studying skills. Obviously whatever sharp wit I was using to fly through high school was powerless to get me through college. I had to quickly develop a plan if I was going to crank out scores sufficient for the amount I was paying (or going to eventually pay back) for these semester hours!

Long story, short, I made it to the fun courses of my junior and senior years (barely...on Bs) and finally found my niche (go figure). I realized and happened upon one of the most powerful tools of review or studying. It wasn't flash cards, re-reading, highlighting, taking notes and re-reading those. Nor was it taping my professors and listening to their lectures again. The key that unlocked my ability to understand and remember (regurgitate on the test day) was my the study tribe I had connected with. Others within my major who were (supposedly) headed into the same career fields as I. Gathered with this small group, engaged in discourse about our separate understandings, proved to be the lone factor that under-girded all of the other study tactics. Learning from this group of women and listening to their vantage points caused me to reflect more on my understanding and recall our conversations on that fateful day when I had to sit face to face with a "summative" test.

I say all of this to make one very important point. As the classroom teacher, your students spend hours listening to YOUR voice. During your mini-lessons, small group table instruction, whenever you're giving instructions or feedback...they hear YOU! This means they are constantly being given information. But if peer to peer discourse isn't evident in your class with student opportunities to "turn and talk", students eventually suffer from informational constipation, (backed up) if you will.
If frequent peer discourse isn't evident in your everyday Tier 1 practice, I want to challenge you to pass the conversation stick to your students.

But more than that, I want to challenge you to consider ways that your students can prepare for upcoming standardized forms of testing by providing them with prompts to discuss in groups of 2, 3 or 4.

Create meaningful, engaging reviews that allow students to process, justify, explain their thinking and do so with each other. Let their peers be the ones that give feedback (while we walk around clarifying and verifying...of course). Let your students learn from each other, for a change! Review season is upon us; resist the urge to control the floor! Lead4ward's Instructional Playlist is a great place to start!