My thought for today: there is a difference between busy with a purpose and crazyness.
In my first practicum, I planned my lessons in a way that got students involved, engaged, talking to eachother, walking and DOING. Because I had a classroom with clear guidelines in place and a group of students who understood what was expected of them, this method of teaching came effortlessly; however, trying to bring this into a class where a) I am introduced in October and b) I tried to change the way the classroom runs, appeared to be more difficult. This situation requies me to meticulously plan every activity in order to ensure the chaos remain atleast somewhat productive. Of course, there are many factors that affect the classroom expeirence (which I will get into more in my next post). Although this has proved to be challenging, I have also come to realize that finding the balance between daily routines and changing activities is required to maintain engagement and create a spark of intrigue and excitment in lessons. When I first began, I would do everything in my power NOT to lecture. I honestly looked at me talking to the whole class as a bad thing; nevertheless, I have realized that getting content to your students is an important part of learning. They cannot participate fully in deeper learning activities if they never learn the basic content. I had to convince myself that it is ok to take 20 minutes to talk about and discuss a subject with a class. Not every day, not all the time, not straight through - but....it was ok. I also realize, however, that lecturing must be supported. Students must work with the content they learn. Recognizing and defining words, for example, is valuable, but students should be able to move beyond this. We should expect and hope our students can take what they have learned and build on it in their own way. Yet, this does not mean that if students are exciting and talking to eachother that they are necessarily experiencing deeper learning. Walking around the classroom, one can notice that most of the laughs have nothing to do with mitosis. Although providing opportunity for relationship building is an important part of classroom development, it is also important to create tasks that encourage communication, collaboration and further cirtical thinking about the subject. For example, I had an experience where students were asked to "teach" their classmates about a component of the cell. I allowed this to be a very open-ended assignment, and I found many of the students just copied answers off of eachother. So, next time when planning a similar project involving the musckuloskeletal system, I designed the activtiy with more guidelines. Students will have to create a google slide presentation and present their ideas to their group. Then, all group members will have to answer questions made up by the presenters. This ensure that all students will be teaching their specific subject to their peers, and all peers will have to participate fully, thereby increasing their understanding of the topic. So far, my practicum has been extremely hectic and chaotic, but I wouldn't have it any other way. If I could make the perfect classroom, I would make sure that students are on task for all of the 75 minutes. However, I realize that might not always be the case (actually, that is rarely the case). I am realizing, however, that having speific daily routines while consistantly changing the types of day-to-day activities we do in class will help students feel comfortable in their environments and exicited to see what the next day has in store.
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December 2016
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