When I Work Less and Students Learn More

After the bell rang, a student was still sifting through old drafts of past essays. “Can I take these home? I want to finish looking through all my revised drafts for proofreading marks.” Me: “Are you finding any patterns?” Student: “Yes! I keep making the same mistakes!”

This conversation earlier this week highlighted one failure and one success for this year. The failure: I really need to find a way for students to track their proofreading errors. I always start the year with great plans, and they always end up getting crowded out. The success: directing students to real life resources. That's what made this student suddenly decide all on her own, at this point in the year, to start tracking her common writing errors. 

On the day we were editing our last essay, I gave students a real-life writing resource: the Publication Coach blog “10 Ways to Become a Better Proofreader.” I asked students to read it and commit to using 3 of the 10 strategies, and during the time for working/conferring, I went around and asked each student which 3 they’d picked. The student staying after had picked number 9: Make a list of your own common spelling or grammar errors. 

I was impressed again with the beauty of the teaching hack of directing students to real-life resources. 

1. It saves me having to create things. 
2. It connects class to life. 
3. Advice seems so much more authoritative coming from a real-life person (as opposed to your teacher). 
4. Students gain access to tools they can continue to use long after they’ve lost all Mrs. Essenburg’s handouts. 

Oh, yes, and also that “pick 3” thing—picking is a powerful motivation. So much better than if I say, “Here are the 3 most important ones that I want you to do.”

Some other times I use real-life resources are for public speaking (like Toastmasters; see this blog for more on my lesson) and source bias checking (like Media Bias/Fact Check; see this blog and this one for more on my lesson). In fact, in a recent class we were comparing magazine covers on the same topic from 2 different magazines and one student asked, “What’s the bias of the New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly?” Delighted that they’d remembered our earlier lesson, I reinforced it by pulling up on my computer and projecting the Media Bias/Fact Check ratings of the 2 magazines. 
  
Teachers Pay Teachers is a wonderful resource for the busy teacher, but even better is when I can direct students to real life resources. That is, resources created for and used by adults as they go about doing real life well. 

What real-life resources do you direct students to?