“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires." --William Arthur Ward
CLS MISSION: To help students identify, nurture, and maximize their unique talents, abilities, and skills as they prepare to become successful and productive members of society in the 21st century.
CIS Instructional Philosophy: To create an engaging learning environment that will inspire and enable students to develop and strengthen 21st century skills to empower the CIS student to become a productive citizen within our community.
At the Intermediate School we use the following questions to help support the necessary academic skills for a successful student and to support our instructional philosophy:
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What does citizenship look like at CIS (within your classroom)?
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How do you foster creativity within your routines and structures?
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What does collaboration look like at CIS (within your classroom)?
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What opportunities do students have to communicate (about themselves and the content)?
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In what ways do you have students apply critical thinking skills?
CIS will provide opportunities for students to:
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Work in a variety of collaborative formats (student centered)
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Use multiple strategies to solve problems and demonstrate understanding (pictures, models, manipulatives, diagrams/tables, words, numbers, equations)
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Persevere through challenging problems
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Apply and connect concepts in meaningful, real world situations
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Develop and demonstrate deep conceptual understanding
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Justify and explain solution methods orally and in writing using precise language and vocabulary
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Engage in critical thinking, communication, creativity, and collaboration through high-level tasks
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Achieve mastery with daily cumulative review
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Develop, practice and apply fluency with procedures by improving accuracy, efficiency, and flexibility
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Use a variety of tools to explore and represent concepts
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Self-assess and set goals for personal growth
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Use what is known to solve new problems, recognize patterns, find patterns in the WAYS problems are solved, and find connections among ideas.
STUDENT-CENTERED LEARNING
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TEACHER ROLE
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Throughout the year, establish a classroom environment that encourages students to explore, take risks, and question one another. This supportive community allows students to share and discuss multiple strategies, successes and failures in the problem-solving process, and correct and incorrect solutions.
Anticipation & Planning:
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Select or create worthwhile problems and tasks that are interesting and relevant to students
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Anticipate students’ solution strategies, misconceptions, and challenges
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Create meaningful critical thinking questions to be used throughout the lesson
Explore:
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Monitor students as they work and listen carefully to their solution strategies
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Assess students’ understanding and progress
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Provide questions to stimulate student thinking
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Purposefully select and sequence students to share whose responses will further the understanding of the group
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If the whole class is having the same problem, pull the students together to discuss issues and clarify the launch
Discuss:
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Orchestrate the discussion so students are guided to the big ideas and learning targets of the lesson
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Assess how well your students are progressing toward the goal and use this to guide further instruction
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STUDENT ROLE
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Be persistent and resourceful in making a plan and solving the problem
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Use multiple tools and representations (pictures, words, equations, tables, diagrams, graphs) to help conceptualize and find solutions
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Solve problems in a variety of ways and describe how these approaches are related to each other
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Monitor and evaluate the progression of the process and change course if necessary
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Ask “Does this make sense?” and “Is this reasonable?”
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Communicate precisely and justify strategies both orally and in writing
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Actively participate and collaborate with others in productive conversations
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Understand the approaches of other students’ problem-solving strategies
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Evaluate the reasonableness of results
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Work with other students to formulate and explore conjectures and listen and understand conjectures offered by classmates
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Continually progress to more efficient strategies and representations
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