How can we
facilitate and
design excellent
teaching &
learning?
First, you don't just "happen" to be a great teacher. Excellent teaching and learning is a thoughtfully mapped out event that happens as a results of excellent unit, lesson, and objective planning.
Home-run quotes from The first days of school: How to be an effective teacher
When the subject matter to be learned possesses meaning, organization,
and structure that is clear to students, learning proceeds more rapidly and is
retained longer.
Food for thought for the spring: Students don't need to know the historical facts of a content area before they learn the present applications, peak their interest first, then dive into how we got here or why.
Example: Students don't need to study the first greenhouses in order to learn about starting seeds in a greenhouse. After working in the greenhouse you can ask students, "How do you think the first greenhouses looked? From what you have seen, how have we made them better?"
Students must be motivated to learn. Learning activities should be provided
that reflect the wants, needs, interests, and aspirations of students
Food for thought for the spring: I will continue to explore student motivations? How can I motivate students in content areas that they may not be inherently interested in?
Students are motivated when they attempt tasks that fall in a range of challenge
such that success is perceived to be possible but not certain.
Food for thought for the spring: Internally I'm screaming as I remember zone of proximal development and scaffolding your students. By consistently "temperature taking" my students I can successfully gauge were their zones lie.
To maximize learning, students should inquire into rather than be instructed
in the subject matter. Problem-oriented approaches to teaching improve
learning.
Food for thought for the spring: Spoon feeding information is never fun. Challenging the students with a question they can't answer right away peaks curiosity. Although, people don't know what they don't know. Asking meaningful questions with purpose and direction is key.
Supervised practice that is most effective occurs in a functional educational
experience.
Food for thought for the spring: Considering this mentioned "Supervised" and "Experience" peaked my interest regarding SAEs. Being mindful of supervising students in their SAE is huge, these projects can be big and daunting, being present and guiding makes the elephant task more consumable.
Importance of Planning:
- Units must be taught in a purposeful sequence to peak student interest and ability to connect information
- Lessons must be structured in a way that promotes inquiry and successful student learning
- Good questions don't just happen, planning what you are going to say aids in funneling students down efficient pathways of learning.
Planning is essential, as is the ability to act and react when working with students. Finding the balance of working out what you want to say or ask for some of the major components so it is clearly understood and effective, but not scripting your entire lesson is tough. In a written plan, I'd encourage using bold or a larger font size for the things you absolutely want to word a particular way and bullet points for the other items that you want to include. You don't want to get to a point where you can't function without the lesson plan in your hand (been there, done that, and it can't be sustained, nor does it really support your students).
ReplyDeleteLisa, the point about the wants, needs, interests, etc of our students is so important! How do you plan to gauge this in the spring? I'm sure our cooperating teachers will be helpful in guiding this!
ReplyDeleteHello Victoria, this is an interesting question that can be approached in several ways. What it boils down to is that you need to get to know your student on a personal level. You can ask the students in conversation what they like, you can pose a question on interests as an ice breaker, or other methods.
DeleteThanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteLisa, your format for this blog post is excellent and does a great job connecting what you learned from the reading (quotes) to future applications for your classroom and student teaching experience. If you find any resources related to your reading topic for the week, such as videos or websites, including them in your blog will serve as a way to archive them for future use and reference.
ReplyDeleteLisa, great post. I sometimes need to remind myself that having students know facts isn't something we can equate to learning. Starting with a clearly communicated objective and taking an organized approach to accomplish that is key to successful learning. Although planning is invaluable for a lesson, how do you make allowance for that accidental learning that occurs outside of your plans?
ReplyDeleteHello Ryan, thank you for commenting. I agree, exploring other learning outside of what you have planned in your lesson can be critical. This can be accounted for in flex time, or, you can revisit topics with specific students after class if the item does not benefit the group as a whole.
DeleteProper planning may be the most overlooked aspect of effective teaching. Far too often, we think about content, without proper context or plan a unit/lesson without thought of meaning, application, creativity, etc. I have read on multiple occasions that Robin Williams was often thought of as one of the very best at 'ad lib', yet very little that he did or said was truly ad lib… his responses were most often foreseen, thought about, planned and practiced... As we experience working with students, we will get better and better at creating a learning environment that supports thought, innovation and more! Nice weekly investment!!!
ReplyDeleteLisa, I really enjoyed how you connected each point you made to teaching agriculture! I also want to say that I quite enjoy your background picture with the books on the shelves; that's pretty neat! My question for you is, what characteristics of effective teachers do you think you have a decent grasp of already and what ones do you think you need to work on? Why and what are some examples of those that you could use going forward? (don't feel obligated to share that in a public setting if you're not comfortable with that, just a thought!)
ReplyDeleteI feel, being younger and relate able to students, I have an accurate grasp on their wants and needs to motivated them via their interests.
ReplyDeleteI feel instructing through inquiry will be a difficult element for me to grasp, simply because it is so easy to brain dump when your students are interested in something. Really, through inquiry and their own research and thoughts, they find motivation through success! I need to learn to be more hands off!
A lot of good thought in this blog. One particular area I want to highlight is the peaking the students interest. Peak their interest and show why it is important and related to them because their investment and retention will be much greater then if it is not made clear to them. Well done!
ReplyDelete