Professional Development and Community School Leaders and Administration Whole School
Occurring directly after active teaching, student practice is an opportunity for middle school students to try out what they just learned. As they explore new skills and content, their teacher can identify and correct errors in students’ thinking before setting them free to practice further on their own. It’s also a natural time to increase students’ motivation for taking on challenges and help them develop a growth mindset.
Student practice validates the perspective that practice leads to mastery. It encourages students to try out new ways of thinking, take small steps that yield visible results, and use new resources to support these steps. Practice is done in the safety of a small group, which feeds young adolescents’ craving for social interaction, and is deliberately structured to be fun and appropriately challenging.
For student practice to be most effective, teachers need to do three things:
These three actions do not necessarily need to be sequential. Use them as needed to ensure that every student has a successful practice session.
It’s important to reconnect students to the learning objective before they begin to practice. For example, seventh grade English language arts teacher Ms. Lopez is teaching a lesson on character analysis. As the class moves into the student practice portion of the lesson, she says, “Remember, our learning objective is to understand static versus dynamic characters and to see how characters fit with their environment.”
To promote the growth mindset that is so important if students are to master new challenges, use envisioning language that presents a clear and engaging picture of what is possible for students and that elevates practice over performance. For example, Ms. Lopez says, “With practice, you’ll get better at analyzing characters, and you may even begin to understand the real characters in your life with greater insight. Remember, we’re just practicing now. This isn’t for a grade. This practice is just meant to help you get better and better at this skill.”
Student practice should go beyond pencil and paper work. We know play and learning are deeply connected, and that playful learning is appropriate for middle school students. That does not imply student practice should be all “fun and games,” but it does mean the practice can be engaging and interesting. When students are provided with opportunities to engage with their academics in a safe, supported way, they’re more likely to take risks in their learning. When students collaborate with classmates, they’re able to problem-solve and experiment together, leading them to a deeper understanding of the content or skill. During student practice, the teacher is still there to guide and help facilitate, but students have a sense of independence as they build their knowledge base.
Before moving on to independent practice, use formative assessments to determine where each student is in their level of readiness for that practice. Formative assessments empower teachers to reflect on the effectiveness of their instructional delivery and make informed, confident decisions about whether one, some, or all students need reteaching or are sufficiently prepared to be released to independent work. Formative assessment can take many forms, including hand signals, written assignments, self-assessment, teacher observation, and partner or small-group conversations.
Although student practice is an opportunity for students to react to our active teaching, it is not the time to put a final stamp on their efforts in the form of a grade. Grading students’ early efforts during student practice may result in their forming fixed-ability mindsets. Instead, give students opportunities to “play around” with the new content. Even formative assessments done during student practice are intended only to inform our decision-making about what supports students may need: Should we stop and reteach something? Would an anchor chart help students solidify their learning?
Diagnostic questions enable the teacher to check whether students have accurate curriculum knowledge and understanding or can do what was presented to them during active teaching. A vague or incorrect answer is a key piece of data for teachers, enabling them to see and correct students’ errors in thinking. Even a correct answer can be used to quickly assess the depth of a student’s understanding, for example, by asking the student to supply reasons and evidence for the answer. This kind of assessment and course correction are vital to keeping student practice meaningful.
Learn more about student practice in Building an Academic Community and at our Responsive Classroom Middle School Course. Then, use our free Student Practice Template to begin planning today!