Taking Advantage of Teachable Moments

What does "teachable moment" mean to you?  For me, it means one of those unexpected times when something randomly comes up and grabs the attention of one (or more) of your students. Teachable moments can't be put on hold... they must be seized immediately. They aren't on your lesson plan - in fact, they aren't planned at all.

For example, walking from my classroom to the cafeteria provided many teachable moments:

• The butterflies at the butterfly bush... why were there so many there? What were they doing? 
• The skinks (type of lizard) that ran under the steps when we walked near the cafeteria building. What did they eat? Did skinks have a mom? Would they bite us?
• The leaves falling on windy days. Why were they falling off the branches? Did it hurt the tree?
• The sounds coming from the music room. What instrument was that? 
• Even the 4th grade student who was being yelled at by an adult...what had he done to make someone so mad? Would someone yell at them like that when they were in the "big school?

 Teachable moments are everywhere...

This started with two children building a tower with pegs.  And then it got too tall for them, so they asked for help. And then they wanted to figure out how to make it even taller... they were guided through some open-ended questioning and realized they could make it taller from the bottom. This was a new idea and caused much excitement! This was a very valuable, meaningful experience for the children. They decided to keep it - they weren't ready to finish... so they carefully laid it on the floor. They explored it on the floor - moving it, fixing pieces that came loose... and then went to group time. The theme and lesson plan were related to going to the Doctor - and there was a very interesting group time related to that topic.  After, the teacher led the children back over to the pegs and the children who created the very long tower of pegs explained how they did it.  This was a wonderful example of a teacher taking advantage of a teachable moment...

I challenge all of you to be on the look out... and to feel confident about straying from your lesson plans and themes to take advantage of the teachable moments that come up in your classroom :)