Quality not Quantity

There is a partially perceived, partially real pressure to push students through the curriculum as quickly as possible. The National Standards of course take much of the blame for this, however while I am a "National Standards Native", I'm sure this pressure existed well before the National Standards took force.

As a school, we are about to embark on some professional development around teaching reading with Dr. Rebecca Jesson. I sense that this will head towards the "quality not quantity" end of the scale too.

While there is a definite need for students in the junior years to read as much as possible, I have been thinking about how to make the learning tasks around these junior books more independent, creative and challenging - looking at the quality of the tasks not the quantity. Our PD this year to date has included SOLO Taxonomy as well as the SAMR Ladder - so the theme of high cognitive engagement is very apparent.

Here are some examples from recent Explain Everything follow up projects: