Congratulations! You just bought a new house and the first thing you want to change is the color of the walls. Ask yourself this…Would you only put one coat of paint on each wall? Interior walls need at least two or three coats to look their best. One coat of paint is rarely acceptable. And since this seems to be a universal truth, why do educators insist that teaching a unit one time is enough for our students to grasp the material?
Every teacher in America is guilty of this. We have all scheduled out each day for the next two to three weeks, and had to squeeze in lessons before Wednesday because we have to test by next Thursday! It does not matter if half your class is gone one day for a field trip, if students are still trying to figure out the material, or if you were not at your best that day as the teacher. We have all been there. We taught a subpar lesson, but the schedule called for a new lesson the next day, so we must move on. Then we finish the chapter, then it is time for a quick review day (that may or may not have any direct instruction), then quiz or test, and move on. We are only putting one coat of paint on the walls!
In the Skills Based Classroom, when we teach a specific skill or chapter, we like to think we are applying a coat of paint in a room. Once we initially cover any skill (or chapter), that represents your first coat of paint on the wall. It’s time to evaluate it and see how it looks. Skills assessments are the cornerstone of this evaluation process. They will tell us what topics within the skill need to be retaught, and which areas may only need a touchup. On Feedback Friday, students will evaluate their own needs and discuss them with the teacher. Moving ahead, the teacher gets to put on that second coat of paint by reteaching the areas of need based on the assessments. Reteaching the skill over a few days goes a long way towards creating a finished product everyone can be proud of.
One of our main goals as educators is to make sure our students have a strong understanding of the material we are teaching. By painting the room with several coats of paint, along with adding some supplemental pieces, we are giving our students the best possible advantage when it comes to learning the material. Educators have said this forever, “All kids learn at their own pace”. That is 100% true, and by painting the walls multiple times, we are helping those students who learn at their own pace when they need a second and third coat. The advanced students have an even stronger grasp of the material, which will show when it comes time for their Skills Assessments.
A Skills Based Classroom will have more time to paint the wall with several coats because we do not have to waste days on reviews, practice tests, quizzes, chapter tests, etc. We use those days to address the specific needs of our students based on what we see from our Skills Assessments. The days we address specific needs are when we add another coat on the wall. After the third or fourth Skills Assessment and multiple rounds teaching the unit, we get a more vivid picture of what the students know.