Step III: Studying the Sites with our High School Partners

For Step III of the process students studied the Quest sites with high school partners.  We were joined for the day by a group of high school students whose teachers are two Mills grads.  When the students arrived they were assigned Mills partners with whom they worked for the afternoon.  The Mills students had selected something from one of the websites they had studied that they found puzzling about teaching or learning as it was portrayed on the site. The goal was to share that puzzle with the high school student and discuss it to get the high schooler’s perspective on the events that the clip portrayed.  A more general conversation about teaching and learning in the high school setting followed. 

Step IV: "Trying-it-out" Presentations

By the time we made our way to Step IV of the assignment the students were quite familiar with the sites---not only the site they had been assigned, but by this time they were familiar with all four teachers ways of getting to know their learners and using that knowledge to inform their practice.  As is outlined on the assignment students were asked to choose one strategy for getting to know their learners and try it out in their own classrooms.  They were given class time to work on their plans with their Reading Group colleagues two weeks before they had to present the results of this effort in class.  They then had two weeks to try the strategy in class and prepare to tell their classmates about how it went.  They wrote reflections about what they learned.