Few things are more important to classroom success than good planning. What did you learn from today's class session and/or the reading assignment that you think is particularly important to remember when attempting to plan effective classes/courses?By the way, comments on the last post were particularly good. I think Jason's last point is a good one: a teacher must have solid subject area knowledge, but they need the relationship stuff too. My guess is that some of you have seen the pendulum swing too much to the "affective" stuff in some of your classes and sense a need for a more content-based approach. It would be a good idea to talk to the Central teachers to see what they think about this issue.
Eric's point on the bad kids from stable families and great kids from not-so-stable families is a good one. There's some interesting research on this. One study tried to measure the effects on divorce on students. It concluded that what really matters is the community as a whole, not an individual family break up. In neighborhoods where families were generally stable, a divorce didn't have a measurable effect on the kids directly involved. In neighborhoods where divorce rates were high, kids exhibited all sorts of negative behaviors whether their own parents' marriage was stable or not.
8 comments:
Mrs. Gerths showed us some examples of projects that she uses to change "normal" routine of a social studies class. I thought that they were good ideas, particularly the one that involved the senior home; the students went there to interview the seniors about WW II. Involving the community like that is a great idea as well as more interesting to students than most of the textbook work.
Not being menotinous in the classroom, planning lessons backwards- starting with the goal of the lesson, and having lessons which tap into all learning styles.
Wow! I was impressed. Mrs. Gehrts displayed great projects that her students created. These projects ranged from the creative period newspapers to the analysis of primary documents.
Hind site being what it is, 20/20; I really wish I had teachers that would have made us analyze primary documents. I believe it’s an invaluable skill, which has numerous applications other than the field of history.
I also was impressed with the projects that Mrs Gehrts showed us in class. It was fun to see how well the kids responded to the rather large projects that she had assigned them. I think that anytime that you let students get creative and let them have some control, you will be very impressed with the results. I certainly was. I agree with maggie that switching teaching styles up as often as possible is a good way to keep the students interested and willing to learn.
I would have to agree with Maggie that Ms. Gehrts taking here students out into the community to talk to veterans is a wonderful idea. It helps students connect what they have learned to their everyday lives.
I feel the two most important things I took from class are the importance of having a goal in mind and not just amlessly teaching the class and that it is extremely important to be flexible. A teacher can plan all they want, but issues always arise.
I, also, was impressed with some of the examples she showed us in class. I really liked the newspapers the students did and how she approached that. I really like how she allowed them to include whatever they wanted in the newspaper as long as they addressed what they were supposed to address. This led to some interesting things in the newspapers and I think it encouraged the students to have fun with the project.
I liked the primary source article. This is where the students look through a number of primary sources and write what they notice in each primary source. I do agree that planning is a key ingredient to successful teaching. I am a tutor right now and we have to write extensive lesson plans and those lesson plans are helpful because they are so detailed. Right away in teaching I think I will write extensive lesson plans, but over time and experiance the lesson plans will be honed down to short bullets probably.
I really enjoyed the different lesson plans that Mrs. Gerts displayed during the class. I can see myself using these different types of lesson plans to energize my students. One of my favorite things about the class is that Barb teaches the same content areas that I want to teach. As she explains her handouts, I like to go through the different angles that I would teach the same subject area and some angles that I like that Barb took.
The class on lesson plans gave me insight into how they are created. Mrs. Gehrts taught us that the backward design was a good method of doing a lesson plan. I concur with the majority of the class in that I was impressed by the projects that she had her students create.
The lesson plan example really helped out by showing how variations of lesson plans can have different methods but still create the same result of students learning the desired goals and objectives.
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