Teaching and Learning

This week has been a real eye opener. It has been great to get to look back and watch the first two teaching clips and just see myself teach. What I learned from that plus the feed back from the class these past two classes has been really beneficial in that it has given me more to look at as well as to look for in myself and in my teachers.

I really like the idea of having a scribe or having someone run the computer for you as you teach. The front of the class just sucks the teacher away from the learning and gives the students free reign over everything when your back is turned or your head down. However if you can have a student doing the writing or running of the computer than you can be out with the students not just keeping an eye on them but getting to know who they are as learners (if they are taking notes or not, see what they are doing helping you know if you need to mix styles up a bit), it gives you the ability to formatively test their comprehension of the material with out giving a pop quiz and to do so on an individual student basis.

Another really good comment that was made was about the fear of silence. I have to agree with Carly when she said, when a teacher asks a question and doesn't give the students enough time to think about it and give an answer before they answer it just turns the students off and they will no longer even think about the questions you ask. Its like assigning homework and telling them that the material will not be graded or tested on. Not a good idea. I love thinking time and I really liked the idea of singling out a group of students (in an area of the room or individually) to specifically wait on or as Geoff said the awkwardness monitor will always chime in with a comment and if the students are just going to wait for him or her to answer that is just as bad as answering it yourself.

Another comment made was on how to keep the students engaged in learning. A suggestion for this was made that you can give them an activity and then tease the lesson out of it rather than give them a lesson on activity. One thing I have always wanted to do that relates is teach about the revolutionary or civil wars and rather than tell the students about the battles or just have them read about them from a text book we would re-enact them. It would take a lot of preparation on the teachers and especially the students part to get it to work correctly if at all but that would be a blast. When I was in sixth grade we re-enacted the continental congress and followed all the procedure to becoming a nation. I remember more about that than anything else I was taught that year. That is my kind of learning.

I am excited to keep going and learning more through watching the others teach as well as seeing the video of how I did this time.