Summary
Strategic lesson closures offer a myriad of advantages, including guiding students in meaningful reflection, consolidating their comprehension, fostering real-world connections, bolstering memory retention, and equipping them with the skills for self-assessment and constructive feedback. In this PD, you'll explore a variety of strategies to help you purposefully conclude your lessons in just a few minutes.
Essential Questions
What values can closure bring to a lesson?
Learning Goals
Examine the purpose of closure strategies
Explore various closure strategies that can be used across content areas
Snapshot
Engage
Participants reflect on the importance of closure and their ideas for bringing closure to their lessons.
Explore
Participants review a collection of closing strategies and consider which ones would be best across three different scenarios.
Explain
Participants choose a strategy from the collection to practice using while they read an article about lesson closure.
Extend
Participants use the instructional strategy note-catcher to take notes on all of the strategies discussed in today’s activities and reflect on how they might use some going forward.
Evaluate
Participants reflect on what they learned using the Rose, Bud, and Thorn strategy and return to their notes from the engage to see how today’s learning has changed their understanding.
Materials List
Presentation Slides (attached)
Lesson Closure Reading (attached)
Exit Strategies Note Catcher (attached)
Engage
Display slide 3 with the Preflection questions:
Why are closure strategies important to the learning process?
What ideas do you have for closure strategies?
Have participants write their answers on a sticky note and keep it handy. Let them know we will come back to them at the end of the session.
Then share the objectives and essential question on slides 4 and 5.
Explore
In the next activity, we will look at three different scenarios and discuss the values of different closure strategies in each of them.
Use slide 6 to direct participants to find the Exit Strategies Collection on LEARN. Provide a few minutes for them to look at titles of each one before introducing the scenarios.
Then begin to introduce the scenarios.
Display slide 7. Read Scenario 1 out loud and ask participants to find a strategy in the collection they could use to meet this need. After a couple of minutes, have them share what they found with an elbow partner. Then ask for pairs to share what they talked about with the whole group.
Follow this format for the next two scenarios on slides 8 and 9. Each scenario asks participants to think a little more deeply about the intention of the closure strategy and how to meet it. Scenario 2 asks them to find something that checks for understanding and leads students into the next day. Scenario 3 is looking for something that checks for understanding and has students relating their learning to their own experience or the broader world.
Explain
Display slide 10 and go over the instructions. Participants will look at the Exit Strategies Collection again and this time choose one strategy they will use to put closure on the Lesson Closure Reading, practicing a closure strategy they would like to test out themselves while reading about closure strategies.
Next, begin to hand out the Lesson Closure Reading excerpt, one per participant. Allow time for reading and testing their strategies. Then, ask participants to first share with an elbow partner how their strategy worked for them and what they took away from the reading while using it. Then ask if anyone would like to share with the whole group.
Extend
Display slide 11 and go over all of the strategies you’ve discussed and experienced in this session. This will look different based on what your participants choose to focus on in the scenarios and what they tried out with the reading.
Hand out the Exit Strategies Note Catcher and provide a few moments for everyone to reflect and take notes in the provided table.
Write the title of the strategy.
Write how you saw it used today.
Write an idea for how you would use it in your classroom.
Evaluate
Display slide 12 and provide participants time to get into the padlet or orient them to find their sticky notes if you are doing a paper version of the Rose, Bud, and Thorn activity.
Take a few minutes for everyone to reflect on the prompts and respond to each of them:
Rose: Successes you’ve had with closing strategies.
Bud: Something you’re looking forward to trying now that you’ve learned more about closing strategies.
Thorn: What has been an obstacle for effective lesson closure for you so far?
Divide into three groups, one for each prompt. Have each group discuss the posts under their prompt and summarize for the whole room what they have discussed.
Then move to slide 13 and have the same three groups look again at the answers they wrote for the Preflection questions. Ask them to share how they feel their responses have changed after participating in this professional learning activity.
Have each group share out a summary of their discussion for the whole group.
Research Rationale
Strategic lesson closures offer a myriad of advantages, including guiding students in meaningful reflection, consolidating their comprehension, fostering real-world connections, bolstering memory retention, and equipping them with the skills for self-assessment and constructive feedback (Ganske, 2017).
Resources
Ganske, K. (2017). Lesson closure: An important piece of the student learning puzzle. The Reading Teacher, 71(1), 95–100.
K20 Center. (n.d.). Exit strategies. Collections. https://learn.k20center.ou.edu/collection/3334
K20 Center. (n.d.). Preflections. Strategies. https://learn.k20center.ou.edu/strategy/191
K20 Center. (n.d.). Rose, bud, and thorn. Strategies. https://learn.k20center.ou.edu/strategy/2224