Anne Davies Blog "Harvesting Strategies for Learning"

I was so happy that I chose to read this blog as part of my assignment! I read several of the posts on this blog, but I chose to respond to the most recent called "Harvesting Strategies for Learning"  because it lends itself closely to my current position as Lead Language Arts Teacher at HMS.

A "Strategy Harvest" is a way to summarize learning after a lesson for either children or adults. While the lesson is taking place, the facilitator (or teacher) keeps a running list of strategies that are being used. Of course, this list is generated with help and participation from the audience. After the lesson is completed, it serves as a way to look at the learning that had occurred. What a simple, yet powerful tool! There are different ways that this could be used in the classroom, as well as with adults. We all learn differently, so to have a running list of strategies, and then a discussion would be quite beneficial.

Davies takes the idea a step further with suggesting a useful strategy to use. "Stop and say something" is one way to get students to think and respond while they are reading. It forces them to interact more with the text.

The posts that followed this one were all interesting and useful for me to read. I would recommend reading "Questions to Explore Thinking" (March 4, 2013) where Davies focuses on looking at data. She proposes several focus questions and makes some good suggestions on ways to break data down, and to avoid being too "data heavy." Again, this ties in nicely with my current position. I plan to use this blog in the future. It was very helpful!