Best Practice

"Practicing Progress"

I can quickly see why Dr. Thomas favors this book so much. In many ways, it stands as the ultimate affirmation of the constructivist strategies outlined and touched upon within the pages of the other four books. I suppose I can say that as a collection, they introduced to me the idea of descriptive teaching: this book shows how to refine it for the classroom.

What makes this book so endearing and not merely another propaganda resource is that it works. The proof is out there. The techniques that define Best Practice teaching are not in themselves revolutionary; they are nothing more than a return to the heart of education. But considering the state that the “curriculumized” learning process appears to be in, Best Practice holds the effect of a heart transplant, pumping new lifeblood into the old system.

As Dr. Thomas advised, I devoted most of my attention to the BP chapters that dealt directly with my chosen field of study: English Language Arts. So the Reading & Writing sections left me with very much to consider.

I cheered silently when I read the following guideline: Hearing books read aloud is a key ingredient to learning to read. Then a minute later, I cheered out loud upon seeing middle and high school grade levels mentioned in parenthesis. Who in the world came up with the unofficial rule that read-alouds should cease altogether once you got to the secondary grades? Why would it no longer be possible for older and hopefully wiser students to sit through a teacher's reading of a story and to gain something valuable from the experience? Maybe it goes back to the way we handle it. Maybe the enjoyment faotor is no longer present as you grow older because it seems like you always have to be working on something connected to the read-aloud, such as note-taking or worksheets. It's a given that Best Practice does not favor worksheets in the classroom and restricts notes to purposeful learning techniques. Meaning that students should in fact not be required to take notes purely for the sake of taking notes, or staying busily engaged. Whatever happened to letting the story take care of that? Or just holding a brief discussion forum at the end like many of us recall from our elementary days in the library? Why should those ideas stop working now?