McKenna Williams Is a Reflective Teacher

Essay

McKenna Williams is a reflective teacher.She has noticed an increasing number of students not completing their independent seatwork in language and spelling.She expects students to take responsibility for working independently while she works with small reading groups.Now she wonders whether she should start allowing students to work together in pairs or trios rather than continuing to require them to work quietly on an individual basis.Her common sense tells her that she should continue to require quiet individual work.Her colleague Cal Sitton disagrees.He allows his students to work in pairs.McKenna respects her colleague Cal and knows he has more experience teaching than she does.But she doesn't want to mirror his teaching without reason or evidence that his strategies are more effective.How might she research this question in her own classroom and produce evidence to support one approach over another?