Questions for each chapter
Please answer these questions for EACH chapter (based on the number of chapters depending on your grade level book):
1. Based on the information in this chapter, what should we doing differently in our classrooms and schools? In what ways might your suggest we start making the changes needed if we are to meet the needs of all students?
2. In what ways might your translate the principles presented in the chapter into practical, everyday useful methods?
3. If you were to plan your next steps for making your curriculum more brain compatible what would I be seeing you do differently in your classes?
Question 1: It is important that we provide meaningful experiences and opportunities to explore for all children in our classroom in our curriculum. These experiences are what help our children process, make connections, and remember. We need to find ways to incorporate these type of activities into our classroom, rather than simply cover the content needed for testing. These activities help our students remember and understand what we are teaching rather than just memorize facts. A way to make a change is thinking about activities and incorporating authentic task (i.e.g, would your students want to bring in someone to see what they are doing?). These types of tasks are truly meaningful to our students and tie in real-world experiences to enhance learning. Let our students be involved in the process: making decisions and let them problem-solve. However, it is important to recognize that student gradually need to be taught how to handle these responsibilities, as it may be the first time some have been exposed to this level before. It is important that students not handle decisions that have to do with safety and that students do not make decisions that you can not allow.
ReplyDeleteQuestion 2: Start letting the students help plan and make decisions for celebrations, school-wide events, fundraising, and community service opportunities related to units of study. Let the students talk with administration, work on scheduling, have them advertise events, make the agenda, setting deadlines, handling communication, and work on all of the details of the event. As students are able to handle more responsibility, you can add things such as creating rubrics for their work, creating seating charts, and creating consequences. You can also create scales for the students to propose and adopt ideas using 1-3 or 1-5 point scales. This way, you can discuss how to improve ideas as well.
Question 3: One thing I will change is to provide my students with more decision making opportunities in my therapy sessions. My students are only three and four years old, so the things that I have them making decisions on will be small, however beneficial to their learning. I can have them make decisions on activities we will complete that day or even decisions on how to handle a project we are working on. Not only will this help them learn, but it gives them lots of language opportunities. Also, as much as possible, I'd like to add more hands on experiences during therapy and try to use as many play based experiences as I can.
1. This chapter focuses around giving kids meaningful educational experiences. As I look around schools, I see a lot of pointless activities that just are time-killers or old and out of date activities. So how do we get teachers to change? I think it starts by educating them on what really engages kids and get them to feel they are contributing to something larger than themselves. Working with Middle School kids basically all my career, if they latch onto something, they are going to go all out and make sure it is a great event or experience. This comes from creating authentic tasks which kids feel passionate about. They love organizing celebrations, school wide events, community service projects, and other social causes. We also need to empower kids to allow them to give us valuable feedback. Somehow, we need to get the kids to evaluate what we are doing to ensure that we are giving them great experiences that continue their learning. It also is important that kids evaluate their own peers when working in groups. This helps them with the accountability and also gives honest feedback to the teacher on how their peers are doing.
ReplyDelete2. Practical aspects: 1. Give kids meaningful experiences that they are engaged with. Incorporate your curriculum with activities like: celebrations, school wide events, community service projects, and other social causes. Also tap into what they are really connected with (technology, current events, music, etc…) 2. Delegation of responsibilities. Kids can be responsible for a lot within your classroom. However, there many times that the teacher must make really big decisions. However, when a decision is made or after an activity, ask them how they feel about it or how they are doing. Many different ways to do this: Fist to 5, thumbs up/down/neutral, exit slips, etc… I also loved the rubric for teams and groups on page 165.
3. I am going to try real hard to incorporate ways to find out how my kids feel about decisions or experiences I am giving them. I will use some formal and informal ways. I really like the thumbs up/down/neutral. I also like the idea of using an exit slip to find out if they have gotten my objectives for the day. I also going to create something like page 165 to have students evaluate other students in their groups. I like this accountability to all students.
I liked this chapter because it reinforces good practices in the classroom, and the value of getting to know your teachers. I put a high priority on this and shockingly I have had little to no classroom management issues over the last three years.
ReplyDeleteI make it a priority to stand outside my door and look every student in the eye and say hello. Hey, Walmart seems to be a pretty stingy corporation, yet they pay a greeter, there must be something to it!
It is also important to note how teenagers need rigor and relevancy in their classes. Some high school teachers in my building don't think there is time to get to know kids and provide a curriculum that is relevant and challenges them....THERE IS.
One thing I want to incorporate into my class that I got from this chapter is more student feedback on curriculum decisions. We have been writing benchmarks for our classes for the past few years, I think it would be awesome to have students who have taken the classes to meet with the teachers and help us fill in the holes of our classes.
Chapter 7 – final chapter for Secrets of the Teenage Brain
ReplyDeleteChapter 7 focused on implementation of information from the book. Belonging is a basic human need. If students feel like they don’t belong in a teacher’s classroom, it will be very difficult for them to learn. Developing relationships with students is so important. At the high school level, it can take awhile to develop relationships with some students who have had negative experiences with adults and other teachers. Also, as a special education case manager, I am not opposed to have students switch caseloads if they have a better rapport with another case manager. As a special education department we try to discuss caseload assignments. We meet once a week to discuss students on our caseload and strategies to help students. It is a great collaborative effort.
As teens become more aware of the world around them, they start to develop empathy, which helps them develop morals. I have always liked the idea of having students do a service projects at some point during their high school career. This can be a great experience for the student and the community. Also, this may be an opportunity for students to experience a different culture if they decide to do some type of mission trip. As our world becomes smaller, I find it important for students to understand and respect different cultures.
Goal setting was again discussed in this chapter. I would like to use more goal setting in my classroom this fall. I want to model the goal setting process. As the book discuss, a student or teacher can set a goal everyday. It doesn’t have to be complicated to begin with. I have always used goal setting in my Business Seminar class, but not my other classes. It is my goal to have students set goals each chapter/unit in all classes.
In a broader scope of the curriculum at our high school, attaching relevance in what students learn is important. One way to achieve this (initially) may be to have teachers do one project based learning unit per semester or year. Teachers could collaborate on different project based learning through out the year during given in-service time.