The AHA! Moment: Signature Practices
Assistant Head of Academics for Middle School Joel Bezaire shares insight on the signature practices that will define the classroom experiences throughout the middle school at USN.
This year, our Middle School has adopted three “Signature Practices” that define the classroom experience for Grades 5-8 at USN. None of these are new ideas; we’re “planting our flag” into territory we’ve already claimed and simply putting words to the things we value.
Our three Signature Practices in the Middle School are:
- We believe that all instructional time is important and want to use every minute wisely.
- We believe that attention is the gateway to learning, and all classrooms should be attention-conducive.
- We believe that all students have the right to be engaged in and held accountable for effortful thinking in every class.
That first Signature Practice might sound a bit familiar, in that a plea for punctuality and attendance came from this very AHA! Moment a couple of weeks ago.
I want to spend a moment in this week’s AHA! Moment to highlight this idea of “attention” from our second Signature Practice and show some ways that our teachers are bringing this idea to life.
First, consider how 7th and 8th grade Latin teacher Richard Rosenthal utilizes flags to designate his groups in class:
These signature practices aren’t student-facing initiatives. You likely won’t hear your children talking about “attention” or “effortful thinking.” But know that we’ll be talking about it as faculty and staff, and stay tuned to this column throughout the year to see more examples of what that looks like in our classrooms.
Rather than simply being a clever way of breaking students into teams, Mr. Rosenthal uses these flags to drive content delivery and focus student attention during whole-class discussions. These flags all represent countries and languages that evolved from Latin; when going over new vocabulary, Mr. Rosenthal will often direct students back to Gallia (France) or Brittania (England) to give students some context about words they might be familiar with from French or English. Students know that they have to be the “expert” for their country/region, so their attention is ramped up during whole-class discussions. After all, who knows when Mr. Rosenthal might need input from a citizen of Hispania?
Secondly, consider how 8th-grade English teacher Christine Park utilizes her classroom space to constantly emphasize her three big classroom themes: Community, Conflict, and Communication. With these subtle visual redirects, students in her space are reminded that even though they are reading very disparate texts throughout the school year, there are common themes and ideas emerging from every work they’re encountering:
Attention-conducive strategies aren’t limited to just the physical classroom space, though. As a Middle School community, we have norms and vocabulary around device usage. Our “no cell phone” policy has many advantages, but one of them is that it’s one less thing that demands a student's attention during class time. With the laptops we provide, we have some common, division-wide strategies for when it’s time to stop engaging with the device and pay attention to the teacher or have conversations with your group members.
We call this “listening mode” or “Pac-Man your device,” as demonstrated in this image:
We call this “listening mode” or “Pac-Man your device,” as demonstrated in this image:
These signature practices aren’t student-facing initiatives. You likely won’t hear your children talking about “attention” or “effortful thinking.” But know that we’ll be talking about it as faculty and staff, and stay tuned to this column throughout the year to see more examples of what that looks like in our classrooms.
Joel Bezaire
Assistant Head of Academics, Middle School
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Athletes beyond Edgehill
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Tech Bytes: Tips for summer
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6th graders head to capitol for spirited debate
Read MoreDuring a fun field trip to wrap up the year, students were able to debate on the House floor during a visit to the Tennessee State Capitol. See more photos from their final lesson here.
Contact
Edgehill Campus
2000 Edgehill Ave.
Nashville, TN 37212
Phone: 615-321-8000
Fax: 615-321-0889
Email: info@usn.org
River Campus
1200 County Hospital Road
Nashville, TN 37218
2000 Edgehill Ave.
Nashville, TN 37212
Phone: 615-321-8000
Fax: 615-321-0889
Email: info@usn.org
River Campus
1200 County Hospital Road
Nashville, TN 37218
USN Mission:
University School of Nashville models the best educational practices. In an environment that represents the cultural and ethnic composition of Metropolitan Nashville, USN fosters each student’s intellectual, artistic, and athletic potential, valuing and inspiring integrity, creative expression, a love of learning, and the pursuit of excellence.
University School of Nashville models the best educational practices. In an environment that represents the cultural and ethnic composition of Metropolitan Nashville, USN fosters each student’s intellectual, artistic, and athletic potential, valuing and inspiring integrity, creative expression, a love of learning, and the pursuit of excellence.