Thoughts about Post over the Last Week

Class,

The following are snippets I found in your posts that caught my attention:

Student Post: he told me that Mr. bishop showed up at his front door on a saturday morning and asked the students mother if he might help her boy with his paper for an hour. I thought this was awsome that he would give up his weekend to make sure this child passed.

Todd: Wow.

Student Post: She expects students to be engaged and treats them according to that expectation.

Todd: This caught my attention. I think we often get what we expect because we lay out conditions which help to facilitate our expectations. I am sure we don’t/won’t always hit the mark, but I think that student engagement in class is essential and deserve high expectations.

Student Post: My gut feeling is to prepare as many activities as will engage the brightest students, understanding that half the class will not get to the “extensions” or “extra” content. How much will the other students feel left behind? Will they feel like part of a “learning community” or a bystander?

Todd: I think this is a struggle that we will each become better at with more experience. I wonder if the attention and responsibility could also be focused on the students. If students are participating in a student centered lesson, where they are helping to dictate to some extent where they are going, I would expect more questions to arise as students engage. If this is not happening, I want to work on this. If this is the case, I can continue to let those students who may have completed on task in respect to what they have investigated move on to work at answering other questions that might have come up. I want to keep it student centered where I work with the students to come up with extensions that are relevant and directed by where they are.

Student Post: They wanted to tell me what they knew and I was willing to listen. However, the questions were coming so fast and furious that I didn’t know how to direct the discussion. It was like I had unleashed a tidal wave after praying for rain. I got flustered and finally had to tell the students that we didn’t have time to answer all the questions. Had I been more experienced and in my own classroom, I wonder what would have happened. I certainly don’t want to dissuade students from asking questions, but how do I guide the questioning period toward the topic at hand? Questions are great, but I also want to have time for answers.

Todd: I think this does fall under classroom management. This is a problem that needs to be addressed so as not to dissuade students. What are the options? As I read this, I wondered if perhaps students might right down their questions before choosing 1-2 to share with peers in a group. They might then choose 1-2 questions their groups was most interested in and share with the class. This is just one idea, but perhaps a strategy to encourage student questions while honoring their need to discuss their questions. I am sure there are other approaches that can be used. What are others?

Student Post: Also, I noticed that if a student gave the answer that I wanted, I praised them and moved on with the lesson.

Todd: I think to some extent, all teachers are probably guilty of this. Should this happen? My knee jerk response, if you want an answer tells them. I am not sure it should be this straight forward.

Student Post: It is possible to have time in the school year to explore all concepts before formal instruction? What would a classroom look like where the students were always exploring before the formal instruction was given? Would the students understand what was happening? If students are exploring a topic before a lecture is given, will the exploration always lead to the intended learning outcomes? This is such a foreign concept to me because I have had so few teachers that actually model this method.

Todd: If it is an effect method of instruction, I think its inclusion is justified. When time is discussed in school and the concern for it, I want to consider the alternative. What is the alternative? Direct instruction with no student exploration? Maybe not, but if it is the alternative, getting through the material may happen with a different level of student comprehension. I want to continually reflect on the quality of time spent.

Student Post: I don’t know exactly what the students learned from this little mini-lesson, but I know the information that came out was more than I understood until college. My enthusiasm for astronomy and the excitement I saw in those students really made this mini-lesson come alive for me. I think I had more students with me for that 15 minutes, than I had for the 3 hours that I taught for my PD lesson. I am feeling more confident and secure with the idea of student teaching, but it still frightens me to think that I need to come up with hundreds of hours of meaningful lesson material. I hope I am up to the task.

Todd: This post may go far in reiterating the point I was shooting for previously. I am sure their will be ups and downs as we all teach. There will be times when we feel that one three hour lesson is less valuable than the one that lasted fifteen minutes. Whenever I have arrived at the point that I am proud of, I want to step back and ask myself what allowed the “15 minutes” to be so meaningful. Was it student driven? Was it teacher directed? Was it in the middle of these two? Was it lead by student curiosity? Could it be described as student mental exploration? What was it? Once I think I have this identified, I want to go back and try it again to see what happens the second time.

Thanks for your posts for the week and affording me an audience for my responses.