It always amazes me how rarely students actually are asked to think in school.
Take the example of writing: Want to write a paragraph? We’ve got a recipe for that. First, fill out this tidy, professionally-designed graphic organizer. Next, use your ideas from the organizer to methodically create a topic sentence, three detail sentences, and a closing sentence to make a tight five-sentence paragraph.
So what’s wrong with that? For starters, real writing isn’t done in proper, five-sentence paragraphs. Nor do published works typically follow the standard “schooly” five-paragraph essay model. Even more striking, many authors break the basic rules of grammar on purpose to produce a desired effect in their work.
If we really want kids to become writers, we need to help them think like writers. We need to engage them with vast quantities of real literature (not five-sentence paragraph models), and we need to have conversations with them about what similar traits and mechanisms they see across multiple pieces of great literature. We need to let them talk about how to effectively use punctuation, adjectives, and catchy introductions. We need to discard our preplanned lessons in favor of genuine inquiry-based conversations with our students. More than anything, we need to believe that our students could think their way to a style of writing that is at least as good as, and likely better than, the standard stuff we were planning to teach them.
The same general principle holds true for having kids generate their own math algorithms and having students make sense of the significance of events in world history. We do our students no favors by saying things like “borrow from the five in the tens column and replace the one with an eleven” or “the Confederacy formed because they wanted to keep slavery in the South.” Getting the students to think for themselves may very well lead to better algorithms being developed and deeper understandings being created. It’s worth the effort.
What do you do when a child doesn’t understand a concept you’ve been working on in class?If you’re like the rest of us, you spring into action right away. Maybe you reteach the material, perhaps you substitute a lower-level assignment in for the normal one under the guise of differentiation, or maybe you take time to comfort the child, assuring him not to worry about his current lack of understanding.
What if, at least for a while, you did nothing to fix the problem? Or, to be even more radical, what if you decided that a child struggling to understand a concept is not even a problem at all — and that any attempts you might make to “fix” this situation might actually be doing just the opposite?
There is a legendary tale of a girl who captured a caterpillar and watched in awe as it grew and then, one morning, entered its chrysalis. The girl watched the chrysalis lovingly and waited impatiently for the newly-transformed butterfly to emerge. After a time, the transformation was complete, and a beautiful butterfly slowly began to break through the chrysalis. The girl watched intently as the butterfly struggled and struggled to break free. Unable to stand the pain of watching her poor butterfly struggle, the girl carefully broke apart the chrysalis and freed the butterfly. Alas, the girl had made a sad mistake: it was only in struggling to break free from the chrysalis that the butterfly would become strong enough to survive and fly on its own. In her attempt to help the butterfly, the girl had taken away its chance to become stronger, and the butterfly, now weak and unable to fly on its own, soon died.
Our students are like those butterflies. Will we allow them to struggle with academic material so that they can emerge with strong and independent minds that are ready to soar to new heights, or will we cripple them by continually “rescuing” them from such struggles?
I’ve written many times in the past about classroom community, and in those posts I’ve always been talking about classroom climate in terms of how the students and teacher interact. There’s a second factor that affects a school’s overall climate or feeling of community, however, and that is this: Do the staff members genuinely like each other, trust each other, and see themselves as working together toward a common goal?
Building this type of collegial environment relies on a lot of the same principles that are needed to build a positive classroom environment: punishments and rewards should be avoided, intrinsic motivation is better than extrinsic motivation, effort and kindness should be lauded, and so on.
That’s why merit pay is such a bad idea. It pits teachers against their colleagues in what all too frequently is a zero sum game: since there is a set overall amount of money to pay the entire staff, if one teacher makes more money, the others by definition make less. Teachers are pitted against each other, and the school environment becomes divisive, even to the point of sabotage. Rather than promoting excellence, merit pay promotes intense teaching to the test (since test scores are almost always how merit pay is measured) while effectively ending all motivation for teachers to be kind and share their expertise with others.
If you wanted to destroy a school’s sense of staff collegiality, merit pay would be the surest way imaginable to do so. It’s a shame that sometimes, under the guise of “accountability,” this horrific idea actually gets implemented.
Looking for a little assistance here, in two ways:
1. I have some extremely fun “Play The Math” math CDs (circa 2003-2004) from a company called indivisuallearning.com. The three games on the CD are entitled Add It Up, Black Whole, and Equation Creation. Since then, the company has apparently gone under. Does anyone have any of their materials or know how I can still get them?
2. I am looking to expand my repertoire of online math websites that I use with my third grade students. So please help me out: What are your favorite elementary math websites?
Thanks for your help! I’ll get back to a less selfish post next time…
The video below is worth 9 minutes of your time. In it, a confident boy named Dalton Sherman addresses 20,000 teachers in the Dallas Intermediate School District, asking them, “Do you believe in me?”
It seems that the most trendy, popular method for setting classroom rules nowadays is for the students and teacher to have a discussion where they co-create a list of rules to be followed.
I propose we back up a step. Why do we need to have rules in the first place?
Begin by asking your students, ”What are your goals, hopes, and dreams for this school year? What would a successful school year look like for you?” Your students’ responses will be amazingly varied: making lots of friends, becoming a better writer, getting a good report card, making the school play, learning to like math, overcoming shyness, and so on.
Once you’ve talked about those goals, the next logical step is to ask your students, “What do we as a class need to be like to make these goals come true?” Then, get even more specific: “What is your job as a student to help make this happen? What is my job as the teacher?”
Voila! You’ve just set the stage for a great conversation about classroom expectations without making those expectations sound like a bunch of stifling rules that you’ve set up just to make your students’ lives miserable.
Posted by mpullen 
Posted by mpullen 
Posted by mpullen 
