Curriculum Corner
Ferri Middle School- September 2019
Let's all work together to try something new, if you would like support or feedback feel free to reach out. Let us know, we would love to see this in action!
"Every Minute Matters"
Mastering Every Minute Matters means spending time with the greatest possible productivity by attending to the everyday moments when time is often squandered. It means assuming that events will forever create new and unanticipated opportunities for downtime to occur, and therefore being prepared with "back-pocket" activities: a high energy-review of what your students have learned, or a challenge problem. It means keeping a series of short learning activities ready so that you're prepared when downtime threatens: at the end of class, when your stuck in a hallway, while children are waiting for the buses. There is no better way to keep kids engaged while lining up for the next class than by peppering them with mental math problems or quizzing them on vocabulary words. You can, in short, always be teaching.
The first step in Every Minute Matters is a psychological one: recalibrating your expectations so that you think not "Well, it's just thirty seconds" but rather "Good gosh, thirty seconds- that's too much time to waste." There's a quiet confidence implicit in such a shift. The well-it's-just-thirty-seconds teacher tacitly assumes that he could not do much in thirty seconds, so why bother? The second knows, believes in, and embraces how much he might accomplish even in a short period of time. After all, almost everything we've ever learned, we learned in the end, in a minute. There was an extra minute of reflection, practice, explanation or discussion that pushed us over the top and perfected our skill or knowledge. There's no reason to believe that learning has to correlate to the glamour, predictability, and formality of the setting.
Once you've embraced that notion, you'll start seeing downtime everywhere, where once, it seems none had existed. A bit of occasional advance planning will help you with this. Keeping at the ready- in your "back pocket" some activities and groups of thematic questions aligned to what you're teaching can make the difference.
Some ideas to try…
Back-pocket questions
Have a set of back-pocket questions ready to go. They can live on real note cards in a pocket or as mental ones. Create the questions periodically in advance, aligned with key objectives for your current units. These questions are perfect to reinforce previously taught content that you can strategically spiral-review throughout your day.
Back-pocket activities
Also plan high-value activities that students can complete autonomously - for example, a written response to the back-pocket questions
Look Forward
Set your students up for success by hinting at the task that is to come. Mild suspense and anticipation can create positive tension and excitement while providing time for students to prepare for the activity.
Nicholas A. Ferri Middle School
Location: 10 Memorial Avenue, Johnston, RI, USA
Phone: 401-233-1930