Several thoughts from chapter 4:
1. Should I be worried? According to Gallagher, teaching has long-term effects. Meaning, "even two years after the fact, the performance of fifth grade students is still affected by the quality of their third-grade teachers." If this is the case, which I believe it is - how could they ever dream about performance pay? And, should I be worried? What if my students had a HORRIBLE math experience in 7th grade... do I pay the price?
2. I love what Gallagher says - "students are spending way too much time listening to their teachers and not enough time developing their critical thinking skills." How true! It is difficult to show tough love and not directly show students what to do. Where do you draw the line between instruction and no, you need to think on your own?!?! And, what happens if you misinterpret their confusion for laziness? So often my students are lazy... simply saying "I don't get it" when in reality, they don't want to think. How do I know when they actually don't get it and when they just aren't thinking?
3. I too struggle with the balance, or as Gallagher calls it - I struggle with identifying the sweet spot. I love his questions as I too ask them daily - "how much help is too much help? How much help is too little help? What is the right balance?"
In fact, I struggled with all of these issues today in my classroom. Many of my students were giving me the, "I don't get it. I don't understand" when they have performed on these same problems before. How do you know if its lack of understanding or simply lack of wanting? I would love some feedback.
In my case, there does not seem to be enough. Sometimes it seems as though I need to sit down and do the work for them because I feel so sorry for them. But, I try and remain patient and try and find other ways to teach them.
ReplyDeleteAlso, on the other hand, it seems as though kids are used to being hand fed and expect it. They seem to think sometimes.....a lot of times.....that they don't have to really make an effort but just wait for us to give them an answer. I had trouble with that today.
I have trouble almost daily with the kids wanting my to give them all the answers. I don't think it is exactly that they are lazy, they just haven't really been taught how to think through questions or math problems. I gave a quiz on Friday that consisted of QOD's from the previous 5 days. We had gone over each question yet when my students saw the quiz some of them just turned in their papers without even trying to answer them. Their reason being it was just too much too do. They were questions that required them to think out their answers. And the questions were the language of the standards. They didn't want to have to think hard enough to understand what was being asked. Even though they had seen these exact questions earlier in the weeek. It just seems overwhelming to them when they have to read through a question and construct an answer that is more than one word. Or when they don't have multiple choices to pick from. I fight this battle daily and have decided this is what I want most to teach students in science. I want them to leave my class knowing how to ask the right questions. If they are able to puzzle out what they need to know, I think they will be more successful than being able to answer questions I give them.
ReplyDelete1.) I agree. I often feel like I am paying the price for previous teacher spoon feeding the students. On the other hand I often wonder what problem I'm creating that some future teacher will pay for.
ReplyDelete2.)Apathy is one thing I can always count on from my students. I've decided that my students cannot be listening to be. I listened to a whole lesson I taught for my TWS. It was a review before a test. There's no way they could have listened to me go over those 4 problems and not had a clue what to do on the test. I'm considering making them write everything I do. There's no way they are listening. They be bound to hear something.
3.)You read my blog. Obviously I agree.
1) I hate that legislators are actually thinking about paying based on performance. What about the new teachers, like me who will have a master's degree? Am I going to be paid the same amount as someone who has never had a higher level education course? What about counselors and other support staff? I don't like the idea of paying based on student test scores. There has to be a better solution.
ReplyDelete2) This happens to me all the time in my placement. I am with 9th grade gifted and advanced students. Today we were working on Voice Lessons. The students are supposed to model passages from quoted literature. Today they had to write 3-4 lines of poetry with one metaphor. SoOOO hard! NOT! They were just being lazy....so I decided to write my own. I went up to the board, grabbed a marker, and said, "okay, I'll write one. I saw this passage the sometime you guys did." I wrote, "I have his eyes / They are stuck on my face / haunting me / daunting in their presence." These activities are not meant to be difficult but fun, something to get their creative bones working. But the students complain every time when they have to write something creative....I think this is because these activities make them delve into something unfamiliar and there is not right or correct answer. They just don't want to think sometimes.
3) Yeah I don't really know what is too much. I want students to think critically everyday and I do not want to do the thinking for them. But I find myself modeling my own thinking a lot of the time. When doing close readings I will usually model one of them for the students, using directing questions as I go along, most of the time they catch on and can then complete the rest of the assignment. Yet there is always a delicate balance between thinking for them and the students using their own critical thinking skills.
You bring up critical issues, Dana, especially in this era of individual teacher accountability. I agree with you about,"I don't get it?" Students need to give you something more to go on. So, what do they understand? Then, you can go from there. I think including writing in your math classroom would help. More next week ;-)
ReplyDelete