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Never Pick up Another Stray Crayon: Why We Love Guided Discovery [episode 146]

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Click below to hear our back-to-school guided discovery system:

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Overview of episode 146:

If you are anything like us, we loved setting up our classrooms with all our brand-new supplies and materials. They were clean, organized, and had all the right parts. However, by winter break (and realistically, sooner than that!), all our supplies were dirty, disorganized, dried out, and missing the majority of their caps. We eventually found a system that helped keep our supplies lasting longer, which is guided discovery. In today’s episode, we’re sharing our back-to-school guided discovery system for managing any and all of your school tools.

The idea behind Guided Discovery Learning is that the teacher creates a shared goal with their class and gives students an opportunity to apply what they learned on their own. Essentially, students are learning why something matters and create that understanding through exploration. So, when we’re teaching our back-to-school guided discovery system, our goal is for students to discover why taking care of school materials matters and how to do it well. We walk you through our adapted 6-step system and share an example of how we’d model this for our students using crayons.

Just like we want our students to learn, understand, and execute a procedure or routine for our classroom, the same applies to any school tool. By implementing our back-to-school guided discovery system in the first few weeks of school, your students will know how to manage all of your school tools, which shows you have high standards for your students and expect them to meet them.

Highlights from the episode:

[00:48] Today’s morning message: If you were born before 1990, what skill do you possess that no one uses anymore?

[07:52] What guided discovery is and why it’s important.

[11:02] 6-step system for teaching any school tool.

[12:57] Our example of using guided discovery with crayons.

[21:18] Today’s teacher approved tip for saving old supplies for the new year.

Resources:

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Read the transcript for episode 146, Never Pick up Another Stray Crayon: Why We Love Guided Discovery:

Emily  0:37

Hey, there, thanks for joining us today. In today’s episode, we’re sharing our best suggestions for managing school tools, and sharing a tip for getting students involved in the process.

Heidi  0:48

We start our episodes with a morning message just like we used to do at morning meeting in our classrooms. This week’s morning message is if you were born before 1990, what skill do you possess that no one uses anymore? Emily, what ancient knowledge do you possess?

Emily  0:48

Well, it’s hard to choose because there are so many skills that I know that I no longer use. But the one that came to mind was how to use a card catalog. Oh, yeah. And man, I loved that and going up and getting it stamped with your card when you were checking out with the card. And I mean.

Heidi  1:27

I taught at a school that was built in 2001. So the library was equipped with this like custom beautiful card catalog that remained completely empty my whole time there because it was a transition between needing one and not needing it at all.

Emily  1:42

Yes. And it just like is such a big part of my memories of going to the library is like looking through the card catalog to see what you know, look for books, and then, you know, checking out a book and having that card in the back and being able to look and be like, Oh, my friend check this out two weeks ago, you know, like when you could see on that little checkout card that was in there.

Heidi  2:03

Yes. In the school library?

Emily  2:04

Yes. Times. What’s your forgotten skill, Heidi?

Heidi  2:09

I think how to program the alarm on a clock radio. It seems like it should be so straightforward. But it was really tricky. And more than once, I would wake up in the morning and be like, Oh my gosh, I’m an hour late, like rushing around trying to get ready and get out the door. And then you come home and in the evening, you suddenly hear your alarm clock. You’d set it for pm instead of AM. Yep.

Emily  2:35

We asked our community this question and we got some hilarious responses. Shannon said that she can dial on a rotary phone. Oh, good for Shannon. I think we could probably check all these off, honestly.

Heidi  2:47

Oh no, there’s a couple in here that I know for sure I can’t do.

Emily  2:50

Karen and Sarah both claim they have the ability to entertain themselves without something electronic. But we’ll believe it when we see it. I used to have that skill. I’m not sure if I do anymore.

Heidi  3:02

Because like I read on my Kindle, so yep.

Emily  3:05

Julie still remembers how to write a check. I just had to do that the other day. That comes up every once in a while and it was like a whole ordeal to find my checkbook. That is that have been so long.

Heidi  3:15

I was just Oh shoot. I don’t know where mine is.

Emily  3:19

Shareka keeps her fancy note folding skills sharp. She says I wrote a note to one of my younger co workers and folded it fancy and sent it with the student. She sent a note back just folded boring and in the note said I don’t know how to fold notes fancy like that. Will you teach me during your prep? That looks cool.

Emily  3:36

Makes me sad to think the lost art of note folding, you know for passing notes in school to be lost. But once Shareka has folded the letter Sara can help out because she remembers how to address an envelope. Oh yeah. Sue has those ditto making skills.

Heidi  3:55

Yeah, I may be old but I am still young enough to have escaped ditto machines.

Emily  4:00

We had some, but I’m not sure if it was a ditto where it had the big drum. And so you may like the master first and that’s not a ditto. What was that?

Heidi  4:09

Maybe high speed copiers? Oh, yeah, couldn’t do color. You can enlarge or anything.

Emily  4:14

And it was just like a whole bunch of copies of one thing. Yeah. Susana hasn’t forgotten the ways of the VHS player. Nor have I. Iran can research without Google, which is definitely a valuable skill. Yes, it is. I had a lot of experience in that. But now I’m really glad I don’t have to research without Google anymore.

Emily  4:34

Don remembers the days of the slide rule, which also predates me thankfully. April remembers hitting play and record at the same time on your cassette player right at the beginning of the song you’ve been waiting to hear all day on the radio. I have done that many times.

Heidi  4:51

But does she also remember how the DJ would inevitably talk over the end of the song you were dying to record?

Emily  4:57

It’s like come on, man. Joy can balance a checkbook go Joy! It’s something I used to do all the time and just know if you can find it. Anna and Susan need to team up Anna can navigate using a map, like a pirate. And then Susan can fold it back up. Which if you’ve ever tried to do you know is very tricky, very tricky. And Shirley has mastered the art of how to get a drink and snack and be back before the commercials are over.

Emily  5:28

I’ve told my kids multiple times, you have no idea how lucky it is now that you guys can just pause the show. We were running like our lives depended on it. And then your siblings yelling is your running back. We’d love to have you join the silly conversation over in our teacher approved Facebook group.

Emily  5:48

How many times has this happened? It’s 3:30 in the afternoon, the kids are finally packed up cleaned up and out the door. As you walk around prepping for tomorrow, you notice bits of crayon wrapper under a desk. So you stop and pick them up. Then you notice some old stubby pencils kicked under a cupboard. There are glue sticks in with the markers and markers and with the glue sticks, and all of them are missing their lids somehow. So you fix all of that and then get back to doing what you need to finish before going home.

Heidi  6:19

Dealing with a few misplaced school supplies is not the end of the world. You can set everything to right in a couple of minutes, but it is draining.

Emily  6:28

Plus you have enough to do at the end of the day without having to add tasks however minor to your plate.

Heidi 6:34

But what if there was something you could do to keep schools play management from becoming a daily hassle?

Emily  6:40

Imagine a world where your kids just use their stuff the way they were supposed to? And then they put it away? Wouldn’t that be magical?

Heidi  6:50

Well consider us your fairy godmothers because we are here to make that dream come true. And we don’t even need magic wands.

Emily  6:57

Nope, just a couple of charts and some papers. And we are set to transform your class from messy to successy.

Heidi  7:06

Unfortunately, we can’t be with you, buddy be this one. It’s going to take some work. But it’s actually the kind of work I really enjoy.

Emily  7:14

Yeah, me too. If we were going to get tattoos, I bet it would be like procedure dorks or something like that. But I like it because it’s productive teaching without the stress of grading, or testing. It builds classroom community, empower students to be active participants in the class and solve some major teacher headaches.

Heidi  7:37

So really, what is not to like? If you are a longtime listener, first of all, thank you. And also you can probably guess what we’re talking about because we come back to it a lot.

Emily  7:50

We’re talking about Guided Discovery, of course.

Heidi  7:54

Guided Discovery is a lesson presentation style, you’re probably familiar with inquiry based lessons. Guided Discovery belongs to that same family of lessons, but we are leaning more heavily on the guided part of Guided Discovery than we would in a purely inquiry based lesson. Or we

Emily  8:13

Or we could put it like this: an inquiry based learning the teacher presents a topic, and students are pursuing their own questions and curiosity about that topic. In Guided Discovery Learning, the teacher creates a shared goal with their class and gives students an opportunity to apply what they learned on their own.

Heidi  8:29

Both methods have the goal of creating understanding through exploration. But Guided Discovery really shines when your goal is for students to learn why something matters. So for example, if you’re teaching PE, you can set up an activity where students can discover why the positions in basketball are important.

Emily  8:47

Obviously, you could just explain this to them. But they’re more likely to remember it when they have first hand experience of what works and what doesn’t.

Heidi  8:55

One time I really love using Guided Discovery was when I was teaching the importance of standardized measurements. Now I could have just told my class that we use standard units of measurement to avoid confusion. But it was much more memorable and much more fun to let them discover that for themselves.

Heidi  9:13

I had pairs of kids measured the width of their desks using a variety of non standard units. And then we would compare the measurements. And we found out that one person’s desk was six, and another person’s desk was 24. So how can that be? Does someone have a really big desk? Oh, we measured in different ways. And that means we can’t compare measurements. So what can we do about that?

Emily  9:36

As we all know, when students actively participate in discovering knowledge, they understand it much more deeply. So how does this apply to crayons and glue though? Well, in this case, we want them to discover why taking care of school materials matters and how to do it well.

Heidi  9:53

I first learned about Guided Discovery in the book, The First Six Weeks of School. Following that book’s guidelines I had a discussion about using crayons with my class. I handed out a coloring page and let them color for a few minutes. And then we discussed what they did well, and how to continue using crayons respectfully.

Emily  10:09

That book is a classic for a reason. And there is a link to it in our show notes. If you’ve somehow missed it, do yourself a favor and go grab a copy. It does a great job walking you through how to intentionally use the first days of school to set you up for a year long success.

Heidi  10:26

Until I had read that book. Honestly, it had never occurred to me to teach a lesson on how to use crayons. Second graders should know how to use crayons I figured. And that is true, they should know how to use crayons, but they don’t know how I expect them to use crayons in my classroom.

Emily  10:45

And it’s not just crayons. They don’t know how you expect them to use glue or scissors or Chromebooks, even if they do have an understanding of how to use those materials in general.

Heidi  10:55

Or at least they should have an understanding of how to use them. You really can’t assume anything with kids.

Emily  11:02

The First Six Weeks of School book outlines specific steps to follow for a Guided Discovery lesson. Over the years we’ve adapted those steps to better fit our needs. So we have a six step system for teaching students about any school tool.

Heidi  11:16

Step one is introducing where as you maybe can guess, where you focus students attention on the school tool that we are going to be using.

Emily  11:25

Step two is establishing use. We ask students what is this used for and add their ideas to a chart.

Heidi  11:32

Step three is generating standards. It’s very similar to step two, where we ask a question and then just write down student responses. In this case, the question is, how do we take care of it?

Emily  11:43

Next is time for step four exploring. This is the fun part, you could give your class free time to use the scissors or glue or whatever you’re introducing, or you could give them a specific activity or craft to try it out.

Heidi  11:56

And while students are exploring, the teacher is walking around correcting any misunderstandings.

Emily  12:01

That is an important step because you want to catch any problems before they can become bad habits.

Heidi  12:08

Then it’s time for step five, reflecting and sharing. Students rate themselves on how well they follow directions and share what they noticed about using the school tool.

Emily  12:18

And last, we have step six caring for materials. This is where you wrap up the lesson by discussing what students will remember to do going forward.

Heidi  12:27

We have a set of Guided Discovery lessons already for you to use to teach your class about more than 20 different school tools.

Emily  12:35

And since it’s about discovery, we gave everything a fun space theme. It does look so cute. It’s one of my favorite things we’ve ever done.

Heidi  12:45

For each tool, there is a detailed lesson plan a chart you can print, or you can use it on Google Slides. And there’s a specific activity page for the students to complete using that tool.

Emily  12:57

Since we’ve been talking so much about crayons, let’s go through our Guided Discovery lesson for crayons. We start with introducing. This can be as simple or as elaborate as you like you could play hot or cold to find the item in your classroom. You could give clues and have them guess what you’re thinking of. You could play Pictionary or hang man to try to guess the item.

Emily  13:16

Your intro doesn’t have to be big or complicated. The goal is to find something that will get kids interested in whatever you’ll be talking about. In this case, we’re starting with the book, The Day the Crayons Quit.

Heidi  13:26

That’s such a fun book. And our Guided Discovery set has a list of lots of different books on school tools. So you could round up a whole library of school tool books if you’re in the mood.

Emily  13:37

Plus if you can find a video for the book which in most cases, you can on YouTube, find a video for almost any book, then you’ll have seven to 10 minutes to sit down and catch your breath while the students watch the video.

Heidi  13:49

That is such a luxury the first week of school.

Emily  13:52

After reading or watching the story, I’d gather the kids for a discussion and ask what happened with the crayons in the story. Then I’d moved to step two establishing use. This is when I want a chart or slide for listing student responses.

Heidi  14:07

In this step, we asked students what do we use crayons for and list their answers. If a student suggests something that’s already been mentioned, you can just validate the response by pointing to the place on the chart where it’s already written and say something like That’s right. We can use crayons to make a picture for someone.

Emily  14:23

Once you have a few responses, it’s time to move on to generating standards. On the same chart right students responses to the question, how do we take care of our crayons?

Heidi 14:32

We try and keep things positive. So if a student says we don’t color on our desks, we can ask them for more details. You’re right. We don’t color on our desks. What do we color on? Yes, we only color on paper, and then I write only color on paper on the chart.

Emily  14:49

Then when the next kid says we don’t color on books, and a few minutes later when another kid adds. We don’t color on walls. I can point to the chart and say you’re right we only color on paper.

Heidi  14:59

By reframing things in the positive, you cover way more potential problems than if you have to list every possible do not.

Emily  15:08

Plus once a student starts the do not train, all the kids want to hop aboard and outdo each other with crazy examples. And your lesson will run away with itself.

Heidi  15:18

Maybe you’ve lived through this a time or two. By pointing the students back to what’s already written on the chart, you keep the focus on the activity and not on all the wild ideas that they are going to try and come up with. They’ll get the message and move on once you have done a few. You’re right. We don’t color on the principal’s car, or do we color on yep we only color on paper.

Emily  15:40

Once you’ve listed how to use your crayons and how to take care of them, it’s time to explore. This is when students get a chance to actually use their crayons.

Heidi  15:48

Part of the magic of Guided Discovery is this moment when students are entrusted with their new school tool. We’ve had all this build up and now they finally get to try it out for themselves. A new box of crayons is always a thrilling sight even for me as an adult.

Emily  16:04

How you want students to explore is entirely up to you. You can give them all scratch paper and just let them draw for a few minutes, you can copy a random coloring page and have them color.

Heidi  16:13

Back when I had a pirate theme class I copied a pirate coloring page and handed those out. Really whatever meets your needs is the right thing to use.

Emily  16:22

In our Guided Discovery set, we wanted our exploration pages to do a little extra lifting. One half of the page is for students to reflect on how they use the supply you’re introducing. The other half of the page is a fun exploration activity. For crayons, we have a space themed Color by Number picture. That’s very cute.

Heidi  16:41

By limiting the exploring part to half a page, it keeps the lesson moving along. We don’t want to spend 45 minutes introducing crayons when 15 or 20 minutes will do the trick.

Emily  16:51

Regardless of what activity you have students do to explore always plan for a fast finisher.

Heidi  16:56

Yeah, you know, kids are somewhere going to just fly through this and some are going to act like they’re coloring the Sistine Chapel. All of our Guided Discovery plans have a suggested fast finisher for each lesson.

Emily  17:08

Not everyone needs to be completely done with exploring before you move on. Once most of the kids seem to be finishing call everyone together for step five, reflecting and sharing. Have them rate how well they followed directions point out the good things you saw happening. Add the students suggestions to the what we noticed column on the chart.

Heidi  17:25

Then you’re ready for step six a discussion about how to care for the crayons going forward.

Emily  17:31

If you have any specific procedures for crayons, you can teach them at this point, then have everyone clean up and transition to your next activity.

Heidi  17:39

Once you’ve taught a couple Guided Discovery lessons, you can easily get the system down to 15 or 20 minutes. But that’s still a large chunk of time. And you might be wondering, is it worth it?

Emily  17:50

For me, it’s an absolute yes. Guided Discovery and tell try tally talk for teaching procedures are the two things I would never start a school year without.

Heidi  18:00

If you have never used Guided Discovery before, maybe that sounds like hyperbole. After all, kids are not going to remember everything you list on the chart for every school tool. But the point of this activity isn’t to have a chart. The point is to make the chart.

Emily  18:16

Right. We’re inviting kids to consider how they handle themselves and their materials, to be conscious and considerate of what they’re doing instead of just getting out crayons and coloring.

Heidi  18:26

And laying this foundation for how to manage school tools really does cut down on misuse. Even if you only have time to do a full Guided Discovery lesson for three or four of your school tools.

Emily  18:38

I scheduled lessons for all of our regularly used school supplies, because that mattered to me. But at the very least I’d say regardless of what grade you teach pencils and crayons are a must. Because students use them constantly. Scissors and glue are a must because of the potential for them to be misused.

Heidi  18:55

And I would probably throw dry erase markers in there because they’re expensive to replace. So we don’t want to misuse those. And of course, there are any electronic devices your class will be using.

Emily  19:06

So five or six lessons at least, that’s not too much for the first week of school, especially when you consider all the time and headaches you’re saving down the road.

Heidi  19:16

Besides minimizing misuse, having lessons on handling pencils, and crayons and everything else sets the tone for your class. It signals to your new students that you have high standards and they will be expected to meet them.

Emily  19:30

But not in a threatening way. Of course, this is more of calling your students in rather than calling them out.

Heidi  19:37

Yeah, you’re sending the message that they are part of this new community now. And in our community, we have certain ways of doing things. When you don’t meet our standards, you get a chance to fix things and make it right.

Emily  19:49

And that’s an important point because there will still be times when your students don’t get it right.

Heidi  19:55

The time when something goes wrong is the second time that those charts you made are useful. So Make sure to save any charts you make for future reference. Then when you notice the kids have left the lids off the glue sticks, you can pull out your glue stick chart and have your class review the standards they set and have them fix the problem.

Emily  20:14

Besides saving the charts, you may also want to print some action plan pages from our Guided Discovery pack.

Heidi  20:21

You know this moment is coming, so why not be prepared?

Emily  20:24

That way when a student jams a crayon into the pencil sharpener or colors in a book, you’re ready to deal with it, pull the little darling over for a heart to heart. Have them review the chart about pencils or crayons and then fill out an action plan about what happened and what they will do better going forward.

Heidi  20:43

Ultimately, Guided Discovery is a system for putting the responsibility of managing classroom materials onto the people who are using those materials, the students. And in doing so it frees the teacher from having to monitor and enforce what’s happening.

Emily  20:58

Yes, there will still be hiccups. But how to address those hiccups is already rolled into the system.

Heidi  21:03

Guided Discovery is a powerful tool for turning your first days of school into a sturdy foundation that will support you for the rest of the year.

Emily  21:11

We’d love to hear how Guided Discovery has worked for you. Come join the conversation and our teacher approved Facebook group.

Emily  21:18

Now let’s talk about this week’s teacher approved tip. Each week we leave you with a small actionable tip that you can apply in your classroom today. This week’s teacher approved tip is save old supplies for the new year. Heidi, I think we’ve already done this one.

Heidi  21:34

Yes, we did mention it in the spring. But I wanted to remind everyone of why they are holding on to a giant Ziploc full of old crayons and pencils in case they forgot. Or if you missed this the first time around. I wanted to give people the chance to use it now.

Emily  21:48

Okay, so why would we want to hold on to those chewed up pencil stubs?

Heidi  21:53

As part of that Guided Discovery Process we’ve been talking about, we don’t let students use materials until we have formally introduced our expectations for them. It takes some planning, you can definitely start your first day without pencils and crayons.

Emily  22:07

Yeah we start our first day of school with pattern blocks. So we don’t have to hand out the pencils and crayons yet. And you can go back to Episode 78. If you want to hear more about our pattern blocks plan.

Heidi  22:18

Now I’m not holding off on giving up pencils because I think there will be problems. Kids on the first day are very unlikely to misuse school supplies. But part of the fun of a Guided Discovery lesson is the big reveal. You’re not just giving your students a pencil, you are entrusting them with a shiny new tool that they will use all year to learn and grow. But that doesn’t mean it’s always practical the way to hand out pencils.

Heidi  22:43

Even if you start your day with pattern blocks your students might need to write or color before you have a chance to formally introduce pencils and crayons. One way to still manage the magical reveal in your Guided Discovery lesson is to have students use those old stubby supplies to start with. Then when you are ready for your Guided Discovery, you can reveal the beautiful new boxes of crayons and the bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils.

Emily  23:10

And you have such a good gateway to a meaningful conversation. Did you notice how beat up those old pencils are? How can we train our pencils so we can keep them looking nice and new instead of these old ones?

Heidi  23:21

So bag up some of your old pencils and crayons before you start cleaning everything out. And also hold on to old glue sticks or scissors or anything else you might want students to use before you teach about them.

Emily  23:32

Or if you already clean things out, you can probably get plenty of donations from coworkers. But our collection been in the workroom and you’ll probably be inundated with old crayons and pencils.

Heidi  23:42

Just don’t forget that you plan to start the first day with these old supplies. If you’ve downloaded the ready for school checklists, make a note on the first day checklist or on the supply checklist. So you remember how awesome you were to figure all of this out and way in advance.

Emily  23:58

And those ready for school checklists are free for podcast listeners in the month of July only. So if you want to grab those head to secondstorywindow.net/ready

Heidi  24:09

To wrap up the show we are sharing what we’re giving extra credit to this week, Emily, we’ll get your extra credit?

Emily  24:15

I’m giving extra credit to Barebells protein bars. I’ve been on the hunt for protein bars that I can get my picky teen athlete to eat, but I fell in love with these myself. They have 16 to 20 grams of protein each depending what kind you get. And pretty much every flavor I’ve tried is delicious.

Emily  24:35

It genuinely feels like having a candy bar, which I’ve heard people say about built bar and I disagree wholeheartedly that does not taste like a candy bar to me, but these ones really do. Especially the salted peanut caramel one which tastes like a Snickers bar. Seriously, it’s so good.

Emily  24:51

Yeah, so if you need a protein bar, check out Barebells. What are you giving credit to Heidi?

Heidi  24:56

My extra credit goes to the book The Husband’s by Holly Gramacho that I just finished. It’s got such a fun premise. So when Lauren comes home one night, she’s greeted by her husband. The only problem is that Lauren doesn’t have a husband.

Heidi  25:10

But when that has been goes into the attic, a completely different husband comes down. It turns out that Lauren’s attic produces an infinite supply of husbands. I don’t know that I would call this book a rom com exactly. But it was just such a fun, quirky story, and it kept me guessing the whole time.

Emily  25:28

I’m excited to read that one.

Heidi  25:30

Yeah, it was very fun, very different.

Heidi  25:33

That’s it for today’s episode, plan your Guided Discovery lessons for introducing school tools at the start of the year. And don’t forget our teacher approved tip, just start the year with old beat up supplies.

More About Teacher Approved:

Do you ever feel like there’s just not enough time in the day to be the kind of teacher you really want to be? The Teacher Approved podcast is here to help you learn how to elevate what matters and simplify the rest. Join co-hosts Emily and Heidi of Second Story Window each week as they share research-based and teacher-approved strategies you can count on to make your teaching more efficient and effective than ever before.

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