Creating an active, individualized program is quite a challenge. But once organized, it’s a wonderful way for children to operate — and actually very easy to run. This page describes how to monitor and guide each child’s skill development in the active, individualized setting.
It includes strategies and charts for use in school or at home. All charts are related to the overview of the 6 Steps in the image opposite. (The overview was introduced on the page, The Steps.)
It took me at least a year to figure out how to organize and manage my individualized program. So, I’m hoping to save you some time, effort, and sleepless nights by describing what I developed.
But before we look at it, I want to point out how the role of a teacher changes when taking such an approach. For to accomplish what I’m describing here, we need to change how we’ve traditionally viewed the role of “teacher.”
The Role Of a Teacher Changes
Here the teacher’s role is similar to that of a doctor, who prescribes treatments to be carried out by nurses or physical therapists.
The Steps are prescriptions. Then in the classroom, aides, cross-age tutors, and parent volunteers act as assistants/helpers.
Or if you’re homeschooling, but also working from home — or your time is otherwise limited — your assistant might be a grandparent, older sibling, or a caregiver. The only requirement is that the child likes them, they can print neatly, and spell correctly.
I found fourth or fifth graders to be very good tutors, so you might even have one come in regularly after their school day. For children enjoy working with an older child.
Overseeing & Guiding Progress
You train your assistant by having them first read the directions beginning here. Then have them watch you work with Key Words a couple of times. Finally, once they begin working, you will need to oversee how the child is progressing.
Using the charts below, I was able monitor and guide the progress of 28 to 30 children. So, you can easily do this with a one or more at home. Or in the classroom, you might start with a few children and expand from there. See how to introduce a small group to routines and procedures here.
Whatever your situation, your job is first to establish how you want the child(ren) to carry out their work. After that, you need ways keep an eye out for how they’re doing and for when each child is about ready to move on to the next Step.
Three Ways to Monitor and Assess Progress
You need to monitor and assess progress continually. There are three ways to do that each day. I’ve described them here in the order I used them during the 90-minute Writing Work period each day.
1.Full Meeting for Writing Key Words. Just as with a doctor, I was the only one who moved a child to the next Step. So, I called 4 or 5 children to my table each morning, to assess their progress. I did that by eliciting and writing their Key Word for that day. This was my most thorough assessment. I was looking for how they were doing and how soon they’d be ready to move to the next Step.
Further, once I did move them forward, I brought them to me again for at least one more day. This, to be sure they’re very comfortable with the new Step.
2. Circulating As The Children Work. Once finished with the children at my table, I got up and began to circulate. I was looking for how they were doing, in general, and watching for someone I should meet with the following day.
3. Checking Work. Every child had to come to me by the end of the work period to ask me to check their work and sign off on it. I simply read aloud and admired the new page they’d created in their Writing Book. Here again, I was looking for someone to call to my table the next day.
To better envision what I’ve described, see “Student Work Cycles,” near the bottom of this page. You’ll also find much more about monitoring and guiding student work in the section of the menu, Managing Classrooms.
How Teacher Time is Allocated
It’s difficult to say how often to hold a full meeting with a particular child. For it depends on when the need as it arises in their work. And children grow in spurts. Just as with speech or walking, they work at one level for a while, then what seems like “all of the sudden,” they’re ready to move on. So, it’s best to save teacher time for when they actually need it.
So, I have come to view it this way:
Equal concern calls for equal consideration — not equal time or treatment.
Equal consideration calls for time spent according to need as it arises in a child’s work.
If you meet with children according to a preset schedule,
You will sometimes be wasting both your time and theirs.
See more about this at the bottom of the page, Levels of Control, Rules and Work Cycles, in Managing the Active Setting, and in other pages of the section of the menu, Managing Classrooms.
Next, we look at some simple charts to help you keep track of and manage all this.
Charts to Help Guide Skill Development
The following printable chart helps you see the progression of skill development. You can see at a glance what a child is learning at each Step.
The second chart gives you indicators for when a child is about ready to move forward:
Keeping Track Of Each Child’s Progress
If you’re working with more than one child, this blank version of the Overview chart makes it easy to keep track of every child’s progress.
Write all the children’s names under the Step they’re currently on. Then when you move a child forward, cross their name off, and write it and the date, in the next Step.
Using this chart — in combination with the two shown above — tells you three things. You can see exactly what skills they have, which they’re currently working on, and what skills they’ll work on next.
There are other ways to monitor and guide a large number of students. See, In Classrooms.
Brief Directions For Each Step
Click here to see all 3 pages of brief directions for how to work with a child at every Step. If you print them on card stock and cut the Steps apart, they become an easy way to communicate with your helpers. Place the appropriate card on each child’s word ring, along with notes about anything special you want them to do, to help that child. It also reminds them what to do at each Step
Another Look: A Day in the Life of a Language Experience Classroom
Language experience is the general term for approaches based on the child’s own words. It’s often done in a total group setting. But this approach, with Key Words and The Steps, is an individualized version of the language experience approach.
Because I was influenced by the freedom of activity and choice typically found in a Montessori classroom, it’s also very active.
And I’m finding that once you have it fully established, it’s easier to run than it is to explain it! Especially in a linear fashion, as I’ve tried to do here.
So, I’ve taken a stab at describing a typical day in my own K-2 classroom, hoping it will paint a clearer picture. See A Day In the Life of a Language Experience Classroom.
NEXT —> TWO BASIC APPROACHES TO READING AND PHONICS