The Teachable Moment

   Have you ever felt like you were in a bumper car, kept hitting the side wall, and couldn’t get moving forward?  You get out of the car run around and try again just to find yourself stuck in the same corner time and time again.  Did you ever stop to think maybe you need to go in a different direction?  When working with special needs kids, it is important to be willing to see when something isn’t working and be willing to go in a different direction.  I cannot count how many times I have had a wonderful lesson planned, but once we started, I realized this is just not working for them. I tossed it aside and found something else to do.  Sometimes, I would just find a fun review activity while I regrouped for the next day.  The important thing was I didn’t frustrate my students and myself by forcing a lesson that just was not working.

   There may be times that a lesson is working great for some of the class and just isn’t right for one or two other students.  It is important to be able to see that and figure out a way to make the time productive for everyone.  By taking a couple minutes out of your lesson to set up an alternate lesson, you are not only make the time more valuable for the one group, but also for the entire class by avoiding classroom management problems that would have arisen from a non-engaged and frustrated student or group of students.  Let’s imagine the class is looking up facts on a country for a geography class. Most of the class is doing fine with individual accommodations: list of what to look up, pictures etc. Two students do not understand what to do even if you bring them to the page and highlight the information for them.  The activity is too high for them.  You can quickly ask them to look up pictures of the country and paste them into a document.  Ask for 3 pictures of buildings, 3 of land and 3 of people.  They are engaged in the country, will visually learn about the country and will not disrupt the classroom learning.  In another example, you have planned to use protractors to measure angles.  Your students are having trouble physically manipulating the protractors you have and reading the small numbers.  Pull the assignment, do some measuring with rulers around the room and look for better protractors later.  You may have to make some yourself.  The time and frustration you save in having them use a tool that is inadequate will save you in the long run.  Flexibility in your planning will be your best friend.

  This flexibility goes two ways.  Always be on the lookout for that teachable moment.  When a student brings up and idea or concept that is important and there is interest, grab onto it.  Use their enthusiasm and run.  Your lesson will be there tomorrow, their desire and openness to the topic at hand may not be.  Engagement and full participation is difficult to get with our students, when they willingly give it, take it as a gift and use it.  Feed their desires for knowledge and they will reward you by being more open to you when you are instructing them.  Some of these unplanned teachable moments have been not only my best lessons, but my best teaching memories.  Enjoy the moment and be a true teacher!

For more information you might want to start here:

http://www.teaching-learning.utas.edu.au/orientation/flexible