Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Program Three, "The Reflective Teen"

Challenge/Intervention
One of the problems I have seen in students and had myself was dealing with sports and education.  On the days when I had a game I was basically always thinking about the game ahead and going through the motions until school was over.  One of the ways teachers can bring the students back is to incorporate their students activities into their lessons.  Say that is it the school's rivalry week, maybe focus on sports during WWII or how sports have influenced history.  Things along those lines would interest the student and keep their minds in the classroom.

What is metacognition?
Being conscious of one's mental processes
Looks like:
When a student is referring back to a map while they are reading.  The student understands that they use the map to help comprehend the information that they just read.  They are using the map to put things in perspective.  

Sounds like: 
A student asking for a visual representation of what they are learning is an example.  They understand that by using a visual aide it helps them to better understand the material.  The students know what helps them learn and for a teacher to recognize this is key.  If the students need a visual aide to help them with the lesson the teacher should have one prepared for them each lesson.

Safe Schools for the Roller Coaster Years
This article was quite enlightening.  IT talks about how students are going to make mistakes and that they should be allowed to make them.  Making these mistakes are the way for students to find out who they are.  The teacher and school's job is to create a safe environment to which the students can make these mistakes safely.  This system also runs on the fact that there aren't any detentions.  The teachers instead have students who have created a mistake to reflect on what they have done and why they did it.  This way they will not make the same mistake again.  Also when students are in a safer environment they are more likely to excel.  This also allows the students to take an active role in their school and education.

A Case for School Connectedness
The main point of this article is that students need to feel a connection with their school.  School connectedness is crucial on many levels for the students to be successful (both academic and otherwise).  Teachers are a very important part of this equation.  They need to make the learning meaningful and relevant while having consistent expectations and using strategies such as team learning exercises in order to get the students interacting.  The article also says to avoid separating students into vocational and college tracks.  It is also very important to have high expectations for everyone so that no student feels left out.  It is also important for there to be a strong adult/student relationship so that the students feel the school is doing everything possible to help them out.  

Self-Assessment Radar
For some reason I can not find my first radar but I am sure that the score could not have much more than 20.  This time it was 38.5.  I feel like a lot of the material I have learned is focusing on teaching to adolescents specifically.  A lot of the information, whether it be the brain development during that time or the dire need for student centered learning and environment.  A lot of this information could have helped me last semester because it would have explained a lot about their behaviors.  One of the more important things that I have forgotten to talk about was that teachers need to be friendly to warm to students but remain their teachers.  Most times I find myself being more of a friend then a teacher so the students don't show me the same respect.  It needs to be a combination of the two.  One of the ways in which it can help for the future is getting more creative with my lessons.  Reading out of the book in necessary to an extent but there are also other ways to cover the material in which the students can do it themselves.  I used to think that handing out a bulleted list to cover main ideas as I went over them was a great idea (and it is to an extent), but doing something that the students are more interested is the way to getting students to learn.  I realized in 251 that students weren't retaining what I had taught them.  This would definitely help to explain why.  Getting the students to interact more and having them engaged in their own learning is the way to get them to learn and remember the material.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thank you Michael. You first radar is on the first packet.