Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash
(Not an actual photo of me.)
Once upon a time, I was observed by a Vice Principal the first time I taught a Writer's Workshop Lesson. I thought the lesson went pretty well. By the end of lesson 1, I had the students bought into making a class newsletter.
My plan was to create a class newsletter, as I did a few years before this lesson, but this time, I would organize my students better.
Interestingly, the students were really into this idea.
My principal wasn't. He reamed me out after seeing the lesson.
In a follow-up meeting, he told me to do some things that I didn't fully understand. I asked him to demo a lesson for me.
He said he couldn't because he was "too busy".
My point here is that if you are not seeing what you want to see, one way to affect this change, to get students to do what you want, is to model for them what you want them to do.
I once saw a lesson where a teacher wanted students to make a poster about a scientist and gave them a template. The students had many questions about what to do with the poster. I didn't know either.
A quick tweak to fix this for next time could be for the teacher to allow students to research different posters. The class could come together again and share ideas to make a bigger list. This might be a good time to launch into creating poster together with the class while talking aloud and asking for student ideas. I might also introduce the website Coolors.co to show them how to make a color swatch.
The idea is to give students an idea about what to do and how to handle the assignment.