Thoughts about Post over the Last Week
Class,The following are snippets I found in your posts that caught my attention:
Journal Entry: During class I gave some brief instructions and let the kids work in groups on a test review and then we reveiwed it as a class. I pretended like Todd and Mr. Borton were not there! But it really helped me because the lecture was much easier for me this time than ever before - hopefully I am making progress.
Todd: I think that being observed quite often in clinical experiences will help each student as you move into your own classrooms. I think we should teach each day with our doors open and welcome anyone wanting to visit. I recognize that this can be distracting, but it may also help to hold us accountable and confident in what we are doing. I want to always have a strong rationale for what is going on each day. This also led me to keeping my classroom door open to the extent possible to again hold me accountable for the products that are emerging from my planning and instruction. I will be able to put this rhetoric to action this week as I will be taping our methods class for my peers to assess and provide feedback.
Journal Entry: Mr. bishop is a really nice guy and runs his class in a very comfortable way. It seems like the kids are very much at ease and feel comfortable talking to him, which is very important when they have questions. But he might let it be a bit too loud and comfortable. I'm not quite sure where the line is.
Todd: I think student need to feel comfortable in the classroom so that they are willing to share their ideas, but I also agree that there is a fine line that needs to be balanced so that comfort does not lead to complacency or not taking studies in the classroom seriously.
Journal Entry: One particular student was goofing off and I went over there and asked him if he was done with everything. He said and that he was and I asked him to show me. He had completed the correctives worksheet and thought that was enough for him to pass so he refused to do anything else.
Todd: I think this can often be a problem. This is what bothers me most about grading and placing too much of an emphasis on it (not that I believe this is happening in this classroom-it just opens the door for this discussion). I want my students digging in to the extent that they forget about the grade. I want them working without worry of grade, but more with worry of whether they are learning what THEY set out to learn. Is this too lofty a goal? What if anything might you suggest to move in this direction? My last secondary teaching position was in a school with tremendous parental support, but also with what I considered too much an emphasis on grades. Students were so concerned with their grades that they would quickly do whatever was requested (for the most part) to achieve a grade. While I appreciate this, I also recognized that this could be problematic. The emphasis was not on authentic learning, but on grades (could this also be the case with NCLB?). I can remember several college classes that I focused more on grades and recognized that I was not learning all that I probably could but was satisfied by the stick that my learning was being measured by.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts for the week. Keep sharing and continue to do so in a reflective manner that asks us to offer suggestions to the questions you are discovering in the classroom.
Journal Entry: During class I gave some brief instructions and let the kids work in groups on a test review and then we reveiwed it as a class. I pretended like Todd and Mr. Borton were not there! But it really helped me because the lecture was much easier for me this time than ever before - hopefully I am making progress.
Todd: I think that being observed quite often in clinical experiences will help each student as you move into your own classrooms. I think we should teach each day with our doors open and welcome anyone wanting to visit. I recognize that this can be distracting, but it may also help to hold us accountable and confident in what we are doing. I want to always have a strong rationale for what is going on each day. This also led me to keeping my classroom door open to the extent possible to again hold me accountable for the products that are emerging from my planning and instruction. I will be able to put this rhetoric to action this week as I will be taping our methods class for my peers to assess and provide feedback.
Journal Entry: Mr. bishop is a really nice guy and runs his class in a very comfortable way. It seems like the kids are very much at ease and feel comfortable talking to him, which is very important when they have questions. But he might let it be a bit too loud and comfortable. I'm not quite sure where the line is.
Todd: I think student need to feel comfortable in the classroom so that they are willing to share their ideas, but I also agree that there is a fine line that needs to be balanced so that comfort does not lead to complacency or not taking studies in the classroom seriously.
Journal Entry: One particular student was goofing off and I went over there and asked him if he was done with everything. He said and that he was and I asked him to show me. He had completed the correctives worksheet and thought that was enough for him to pass so he refused to do anything else.
Todd: I think this can often be a problem. This is what bothers me most about grading and placing too much of an emphasis on it (not that I believe this is happening in this classroom-it just opens the door for this discussion). I want my students digging in to the extent that they forget about the grade. I want them working without worry of grade, but more with worry of whether they are learning what THEY set out to learn. Is this too lofty a goal? What if anything might you suggest to move in this direction? My last secondary teaching position was in a school with tremendous parental support, but also with what I considered too much an emphasis on grades. Students were so concerned with their grades that they would quickly do whatever was requested (for the most part) to achieve a grade. While I appreciate this, I also recognized that this could be problematic. The emphasis was not on authentic learning, but on grades (could this also be the case with NCLB?). I can remember several college classes that I focused more on grades and recognized that I was not learning all that I probably could but was satisfied by the stick that my learning was being measured by.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts for the week. Keep sharing and continue to do so in a reflective manner that asks us to offer suggestions to the questions you are discovering in the classroom.
posted by Todd | 5:42 AM
1 Comments:
Todd, I thought your comment to my first journal entry was interesting. I hope that you don't expect me to believe that you always liked being observed from the time you started and that it never made you nervous. That was simply all I was eluding to - it had nothing to do with not wanting to be accountable or confident.
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