In the past couple years I have become a huge fan of “guided practice.” Of course, this is a part of any dynamite lesson plan but I have come to see it as the single most important part of my teaching. The reason for this is that I’ve seen amazing results.
Guided practice is just that: guiding kids through practicing the standard. I call this step “welcome to my brain.” I preface it by telling the kids I have takes many tests to be successful in life. I establish myself as an “expert test taker.” Then I get them interested by showing them how I, the teacher, takes tests and scores high. I find the buy in to be almost 100%.
I go through my mental processes and as we move to independent practice I know they have seen my steps. Then, they ideally use the steps I did to solve the problems on their own. It works very well and I recommend it to you as a key part of a dynamite lesson plan.
