Classroom Games

I was able to use this game for a fourth grade science class I substituted for on Friday.  The class was reviewing terms for an upcoming test and the class was probably more attentive than they would have been if I had just given a lecture.  This game is called Pass the Flag.  The definitions were called out and the students had to recognize the terms that went with the definitions.  A flag is given to the first person in each row.  The first person to raise their flag may answer the question.  If the answer is correct, the student will pass the flag to the student behind him.  The first row to finish wins the game.

Asking Better Questions Book Review

The authors are astonished that children in today’s world are unable to ask productive questions, as well as amazed to see how questioning remains neglected.  There are many articles and texts dealing with questioning as a component of teaching, however the emphasis remains on theory and theory of practice.  It is the author’s opinion that the focus should be on the everyday practicalities of classroom interaction.  Effective teaching depends upon a teacher’s skill in being able to ask questions that generate different kinds of learning.  Effective teachers actually recognize that good questions must challenge the students to be creative.  In my experience, many teachers are reluctant to break away from traditional structures, even though they may want to engage in more classroom discourse.  I have seen teachers in the past that view learning as knowing the right answer and feel uncomfortable using strategies that cannot be measured in traditional ways, however hopefully, that line of thinking is changing.  In today’s classroom,  I think that many teachers realize that the whole student is made up of the Cognitive Domain, the Affective Domain and the Psychomotor Domain.  Teachers recognize that education is concerned with the development of the whole student and that no part is greater than the whole.  Good questioning techniques must be presented in a way that connects with the student at both an intellectual and feeling level.  I agree with the authors in asking “why is it that schools tend to concentrate on cognitive and psychomotor development of their students and leave the affective to educate itself?”  Assessment seems to be the response in this case. Facts and knowledge can be shared and tested but emotions and attitudes are regarded as personal and private. I think that many teachers feel there is no time to deal with the affective domain, as most of the teachers that I talk with are teaching what will be on the standardized tests.  The authors talk about different types of learners including passive and active learners.  In most classrooms today, students are in the active mode where they realize their responsibility to express their ideas and feelings about the content of the lesson.  The authors believe that effective teaching depends upon recognizing that effective learning takes place when the students are vigorous participants in what’s going on.  Teachers have to provide experiences that cause creative thinking and generate in students a need for expression.  Questions from both teachers and students should provoke a creative learning experience.  I agree with the authors that effective questions generate student thinking and interest in making answers, and that to be an effective questioner, a teacher should have the patience to wait for answers to be formulated and develop the skill of listening so you will know how to respond.  I think that the information in this book relates to our course by teaching us how to use effective questioning skills to teach across our content areas and relate to the student as a whole.  

I found several concepts interesting concerning the author’s statements about Bloom’s Taxonomy.   In his glossary of questions, the author goes into quite a bit of detail concerning lower order and higher order questioning which relate to open and closed questioning and to overt and covert questioning and so on.  I found it interesting how the author relates higher order questioning to the last three categories of Bloom’s taxonomy because these questions demand more complex thinking including analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.  Also related to Bloom’s taxonomy is the lower order questioning that requires knowledge, comprehension, and application.  This line of questioning is less complex and requires lower order thinking.  No matter what type of questioning you choose to do in your classroom, there will be a relationship of one kind or another to the taxonomy because questioning generates student interest and thinking whether it is higher order or lower order.

The author talks about how Bloom and Krathwohl made their great contribution to education by creating Bloom’s taxonomy.  The development of thinking skills has previously been guided by Bloom’s taxonomy.  The author reveals that the taxonomy suggests that you cannot value or judge something until you know the facts, understand the facts, can apply the facts, can take the facts apart, and can put the facts back together from a new perspective.  However, in todays world  it is being more and more recognized that it is not necessarily the order provided by the taxonomy that matters but the kind of thinking and feeling that is important.  Questions should come from interest on the part of the teacher and the student and  simple factual recall questions are often not that interesting especially when  a teacher is starting an inquiry into a new area.

 Wait time or thinking time, is very important according to the authors.  When a teacher is able to wait calmly while the students are thinking about their answers, it builds trust between students and teacher, gives the students time to look at many angles, frees the students to provide more meaningful answers, pushes them to respond by speaking what is on and in their minds as well as share the responsibility for their learning and increases students’ interaction amongst themselves and student to teacher responses.

The authors state that the thinking time should be as long as 3 seconds.  I take significantly longer in many cases.   This may be because I am trained in psychology, but I tend to wait up to a minute when timed.

Research demonstrates that as we increase thinking time, significant changes occur.  Students tend to give longer answers, more of them volunteer and ask more questions, their responses are more analytical, creative, and evaluative.  They also report that “Class is more interesting.”  When a student is thinking and feeling, which are internal activities, they need more energy as well as time.

I agree that it is extremely important to have a wait time.  Not all students think as fast, or slow as the others.  Any teacher is going to have students that learn more slowly than others.  I think that the wait time is dependent upon the student and the question.  For some teachers, a 3 second wait time may be appropriate but for others, a longer period of time is needed.  That just does not seem like a long enough time to me.  I want all of the students in my classroom to be able to really think about their answers before calling upon them.  I find that when I wait for a long enough period of time, my students will provide answers that are more appropriate and lengthier than when they are not given enough time.

One of my teaching strategies is using appropriate assessment and feedback.  From the questions on assessment in Appendix 8, I found several ways to evaluate this strategy.  Assessment and feedback should use a variety of assessment  techniques and allow students to demonstrate their mastery of the material in different ways.  Assessment and feedback should avoid those assessment methods that encourage students to memorize and regurgitate.  I should recognize the power of feedback to motivate more effort to learn.

From the Appendix 8 questions about Focus, I also realized that good teaching should foster a sense of interest in the subject matter.  I should create learning tasks appropriate to the student’s level of understanding.  I should also recognized the uniqueness of individual learners and avoid the temptation to treat all learners as if they are exactly the same.  If  I am able to teach to the variety of individual learners, I think it would allow students to enjoy learning more.

The following are several of the questions that I thought would help me improve my teaching:

How will I assess this Material?  I will use different methods, such as group work, individual work, homework and testing.  Using a variety of methods to assess the material will show me if the students have mastered the material and if any of the students respond better to one way of assessment better than another.

Can I rely on materials being available, or do I need to book? 

In many schools they only have one or two of whatever you may need.  You would need to book well in advance to make sure that you have that piece of equipment when you need it.

What is my attitude toward home work?

When I assign homework, it should be turned in, in a timely manner.  If not, it will affect their grade.  I also believe that I should grade and return their homework in a timely manner as to show a good example to my students.

A quote from the book that I liked was:

 “All knowledge results from questions, which is another way of saying that question-asking is our most important intellectual tool”.  This quote is on page 18 and the author of this quote is Neil Postman.  I am very interested in teaching science and I think that this is a perfect quote for science because science is all about asking the questions and trying to find explanations.  I also think that science is a very interesting and intellectually challenging subject.

Hatchet Book Review

Hatchet

By
Gary Paulsen

Born May 17, 1939, Gary Paulsen is one of America's most popular writers for young people. He is a three time Newbery Honor author.  He has written more books in the Hatchet series, such as Brian’s Return and Brian’s Winter, Brian’s Hunt and the River.  Running away from home at the age of 14 and traveling with a carnival, Paulsen acquired a taste for adventure. A youthful summer of rigorous chores on a farm; jobs as an engineer, construction worker, ranch hand, truck driver, and sailor; and two rounds of the 1,180-mile Alaskan dog sled race, the Iditarod; have provided ample material from which he creates his powerful stories. This would be an excellent choice for novel studies in my fourth grade English class.  This book can be used to teach imagery, writing, predictions and visualization. 
This book is a book that encourages imagination to visualize all that Brian goes through on this difficult journey.  It’s an extremely well told story that kept me wanting to know what would happen next, and looking forward to the next book in the series.   Brian Robeson, 13, is the only passenger on a small plane flying him to visit his father in the Canadian wilderness when the pilot has a heart attack and dies. The plane drifts off course and finally crashes into a small lake. Miraculously Brian is able to swim free of the plane, arriving on a sandy tree-lined shore with only his clothing, a tattered windbreaker, and the hatchet his mother had given him as a present. In the book, Brian must deal with insane moose, and making a new friend; fire. Hunting and food gathering is a major part of the book, which makes it seem very realistic, but will Brian ever make it home alive?  Paulsen effectively shows readers how Brian learns patience to watch, listen, and think before he acts as he attempts to build a fire, to fish and hunt, and to make his home under a rock overhang safe and comfortable.A highlight in this book for me was when Brian was out hunting, and had just dipped his bloody hands into the water.  Something slight caught his attention and it came down on him like a speeding train.  He just had time to see that it was a moose.  He had only seen them in pictures.  It took him and threw him in the lake and then went into the water after him to finish the job.  She used her head to drive him down into the mud at the bottom of the lake.  Insane, is what he thought.  Once he was out of the water, he realized that he was severely injured, especially his ribs and shoulders. 
Not only was he alone and hungry, now his health was also a complicating factor.Following his parent’s divorce, fourteen year-old Brian is on his way to visit his father when the single-engine plane in which he is flying crashes.  Now, Brian is alone in the Canadian wilderness with nothing but a tattered Windbreaker and the hatchet his mother gave him as a present– and the dreadful secret that has been tearing him apart since his parent’s divorce.  But now Brian has no time for anger, self pity, or despair.  It will take all his determination and courage to survive.

A Good Day For Math

I had a good day in math class today.  I substituted for a 5th grade class and I was able to use an Active Learning Energizer with the class who had been studying mean, median, and mode.  The purpose of the activity was to get the students to understand the difference between the mean, median, and mode.  Our materials included data sheets and pencils.  The students were paired up in groups of two and told to do as many sit-ups  as they could in one minute.  The partners recorded each others' scores.  Then, the groups of two were combined with another group of two to make a larger group of four.  Using a prepared form and the data from the situps, each group determined the mean, median, and mode of their data.  It took about 10 minutes and the students appeared glad to get a break from routine lecture.

Typical Monday

Today I had to substitute for a 7th grade english class.  Off  course I usually end up with a class clown and this was the way it was today.  The students were studying prepositions so I divided them up into groups of four and had them list all the prepositions they could think of.  One group listed 16, which was the most out of the five groups and I guess I was a little surprised.   Anyway, it gave us something to work on and overall the class went better than expected which is always a good thing.