The Teaching and Learning Cycle continues to be our instructional “big picture”. It is commonly referred to as WHHW. The letters stand for What, How, How, and What.
WHAT: We build learning targets and key questions from standards in planning for each week. Learning targets written in the form of Know-Think-Show help us to clearly identify the nouns, verbs and assessment of the target.
HOW: There are five steps we use for every target: Post it, unwrap it to help kids understand key vocabulary, try to make it relevant, bring it back throughout the lesson, and assess it.
We are working to ensure that kids process some of their thinking in writing and providing exemplars so they know what proficient looks like.
HOW: Use pre-assessment to find out if they already know it, and use formative assessment to find out what they’ve learned from what has been taught. This is affectionately known as our “data” and we have evidence to support that we are growing in our ability to use it every week! (more to come on collab day!)
WHAT: What will we do if some or all haven’t learned it? Re-teach with some? Re-teach with all? Continue making sure distributed practice is in our plans to help provide opportunities for practice until mastery? Try to explain it a different way?