Practice vs Activities

I have been recently been thinking more and more about how teachers and students spend their days. One of my jobs at work is curriculum alignment and I spend a lot of time helping develop a common language and goals across grade levels. A colleague and I are getting ready to present at a conference on this very topic and specifically the literacy practices she uses in her kindergarten classroom to teach the language of literacy and help her students achieve their literacy goals. I realized as we did a deep dive into the choices she makes as an educator of how the precious time in her classroom is utilized that student success comes from her choice to create time for practices and not just activities.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary online the definition of activity is:

• The condition in which things are happening or being done.

While the same source states the definition of practice is:

• The actual application or use of an idea, belief, or method, as opposed to theories relating to it. 
• The customary, habitual, or expected procedure or way of doing something.
• To perform (an activity) or exercise (a skill) repeatedly or regularly in order to improve or maintain one's proficiency (italics added).

This is the secret to maximizing the learning environment. When we think about it, this is also the power of Daily 5. Are you giving the students activities or things to be done that don’t really connect to other skills? Or do you spend precious classroom time giving your kids the ability to apply what they are learning, repeatedly and regularly to improve proficiency, which leads to independence by building a learned procedure or habit for learning? It is important for teachers to know the difference so learning outcomes can be maximized!