Chapter 7,8

Our group, Cam, Nick,and I did a small skit on rewards or having an activity period. The premise was that our class had the routine of having activity period every thursday at the last half of the period. But this thursday Mr. Mowatt wasn't going to allow us to have activity period. If you have to change a routine students are familiar with then it is a good idea to let them know in advance, give them a reason for it, and make any necessary compromises. If Mr. Mowatt had told us when we got to class that we were not going to have activity period today because we need to finish reviewing for the test tomorrow. If we still were upset he could compromise by saying that we would have activity period after the test.

Student Sample

Ever wanted to go back in time to a famous era? An era that has always interested me was the American Revolution. We do not have the technology to go back in time. So I brought the revolution to modern day. Instead of the founding fathers pleading their case before King George III in 1776, it is 2009 and myself and a group of actors (not so well paid) are interns for a big company. We wrote out a "declaration of independence from the tyranny of a powerful executive." Our hope is to state our grievances and convince our boss to change his mind. Enjoy the movie!

Chapter 10: Going Beyond the Classroom

Students like to do things outside of school. Take an interest and encourage their learning outside of the classroom. That is where learning will become real for them, when they do it on their own because they want to. I love to read, I always have. One of my favorite parts of summer was all the extra time to read whatever books I wanted instead of the ones the teachers assigned in English class. Other students will take an interest in things outside of school that can help them learn. The main point here is to encourage that learning.

Chapter 9: When Things Go Wrong

I thought a good point the book made was to not be afraid to apologize. The students that were interviewed said that they know when a teacher messes up or does something inappropriate. I think that means that my future students will know too. I think I might be afraid to admit when I have screwed up because that would make me look less in control or in charge. However, apologizing would set a better example and be the right thing to do. After all, teachers are supposed to model appropriate behavior for students.

Chapter 8: Teaching Teenagers who are still Learning English

The suggestion was “help us understand the secrets of book language.” Page 152 Things like chapter subheads, words that indicate comparisons, and where illustrations or charts fit in with the text. Also giving them a vocabulary list so they know what to look for will help. I never thought how a book is set up in English could be confusing. I am just so used to knowing what figure 15.3 means when I go to look for the graph. I will definitely keep this in mind if I ever encounter an ELL student in my classes.

Chapter 7: Teaching Difficult Academic Material

The suggestion was to try different ways to approach things. This just screamed MI to me. The student said that a computer program helped turn a word problem into a graph for math class. This helped the student learn it better because the graph was visual form while the text would have appealed to a linguistic learner. I was also reminded of a chemistry teacher I had. For three days in a row he tried to get a certain group of student to understand a concept. I understood it the first day so for the next two days I sat there bored out of my mind. They still could not get it and it suddenly occurred to me while reading this chapter, that he taught the material the same way all three times. Now that I look back on it, I wonder how he thought that was helping.

Chapter 6: Motivation and Boredom

The suggestion was that teacher help students stay on top of their home work load. One student talked about how teachers just passed him along from grade to grade even though he did not do the work. The other student talked about how things at home are distracting and it is hard to do work. I always thought that since I was at school for most of the day there was no reason why the work could not be done there. I can see doing a little bit for practice or to rethink a complex idea. But if the work load was heavy it was because we had to finish learning the lesson that the teacher ran out of time trying to teach us.That always made the work overwhelming and very difficult to complete.