How to Plan for Aggressive Monitoring in your Classroom

There 4 steps to planning for Aggressive Monitoring in your lessons:

Step One: Identify what you are monitoring for in your lesson. 
The monitoring focus should aligned to the lesson objective an enable you to clearly determine the students who grasp the material and the students who need more support. It is important to consider what key concepts students need to understand in order to produce an exemplar answer.

Step Two: Create an exemplar response. 
When creating your exemplar, consider what you expect to see from students work. What strategies should be shown? What key take away should every student write? Write exemplar using student friendly or grade-level appropriate language.

Step Three: Determine potential student misconceptions or misunderstandings. 
Think about where students may get confused. Consider all the students in your classroom and individual needs for exceptional learners.

Step Four- Create targeted questions in response to student misunderstandings.
Consider what you will ask students to ensure they are developing an understanding the lesson objective. These are the questions that you are going to ask students when you are circulating the room. You may need to create “break it down” questions (BIDS) or foundational questions to support students.

Break it down” Strategies for conferring with individual students:

• Teach Back: “What did Auggie say about school when we were reading together again?”
  • Ask students to repeat what they already know from the content or from the lesson.
• Word on the Street: “As I was walking around, I noticed that Cesar circled this sentence. Why do you think he did that?”
  • Highlight the action of a successful student and then ask why they think they chose that action.
• Skill-based questions: “Today we have talked a lot about character feelings. What does Auggie say that tells us how he feels?”
  • Remind the student of the lesson focus or a key skill in order to spark their thinking.