As teachers, many of us are regularly looking to challenge
traditional teaching methods. Simply put, the classic teacher at the front,
students seated to attention method of teaching just does not work well anymore
and students do not respond.
There are many new ways of engaging students in classrooms
to dliver materials. I watched and analyzed three videos with different methods
and will discuss these with you below. I’d love to hear your thoughts on each
one in the comments.
The Three Methods:
Video 1:
Roller
Coaster Physics
Academic
Expectations:
This
teacher seems to be very engaged in her students’ learning. However, contrary
to what we will watch in the next video, she seems to correlate individual
students’ academic expectations with their individual skills and capacities.
For example, she has the groups working on the projects determine the roles
they will each play within their groups. This helps students naturally select
the organizers, the administrative or detailed students, the
creative/ideas-people, etc. In the end they all learn the physics concepts and
are held to the same standards for these, but they then are expected to learn
more on an individual basis and she uses the activity as a formative assessment
tool to understand the students’ levels and needs better.
Behavior
Expectations:
Again,
this lesson planning leaves expectations to the individuals. There are group
activities and reflections where certain rules are clear: students are expected
to listen to each other and to respect each other. They are also expected to
actively participate. How they do this is open and there is room for them to
fill in the activity the way they would like.
Norms
and Procedures:
Most
striking is the way the teacher uses problem solving and creativity
procedurally to stimulate high performance. Students are expected to create a
budget and buy their materials for each project. They have to justify materials
use and decisions they make, and will therefore have to work as a group for
decisions.
There
is a feedback loop that encourages sharing and best practices.
Video 2:
3rd
Grade Chinese Math
Academic expectations:
In contrast with the preceding video, the
academic expectations set by the teacher in this video seem to rest entirely on
the group learning and not at all on the individual. The teacher teaches by
consistent repletion and the group goes very quickly. It is clear that her
focus is on the entire class learning and being able to repeat the lessons. It
is expected that students participate in front o the entire class and not as a
group.
Behavior Expectations:
It is striking in this video that behavior
expectations seem to be for the entire group and individual variations from the
norm are acceptable. Here and there, a student seems to wander off, speak out
of turn, etc. At one point the teacher does shush a student, but is typically
focused on the overall group dynamics and not individual behaviors.
Norms and Procedures:
This lesson uses memory techniques including
repetition to enforce learning. What may enforce learning here is the fact that
students are expected to participate a great deal in front of the class. This
creates pressure and can add to competition. Whether this is great
psychologicaly is another story! But for the purpose of student performance,
this would likely stimulate many students to participate and create an
atmosphere where high achievement is valued.
Video 3:
Whole
Brain Teaching
Academic expectations:
This video uniquely combines some aspects of
the learning activities in the first two. The teacher is highly engaged in her
students’ learning, and as such expects their high engagement as well. The
teaching goes quickly and seems to have clear and high learning objectives.
Students repeat what is expected of them both verbally as well as physically,
engaging more of them and encouraging real retention.
Behavior expectations:
The behavior expectations are the most clear
of any of the classroom settings in the three videos. Every student can repeat
and act out everything, from values to interaction norms to respect for others,
and seem to do so at each lesson.
Norms and Procedures:
Students work either as a whole group, alone,
or in pairs. In each scenario they participate out loud, verbally and
physically, thereby engaging their whole brains.
The lessons stimulate a high student
performance by making learning fun and sort of forcing, in a fun and engaging
way, a focus on the activities at hand. It does not leave a great deal of room
for distraction or other activities beyond the task at hand.
Setting high performance expectations among my students
I teach both mathematics and drama in a middle school in the
Netherlands. It’s an international school, so my students are mixed backgrounds
and vary in the amount of English they master.
We follow the International Baccalaureate Curriculum, and as
such our academic standards are very high. The method I relate to the most is
the one exhibited in Video 1. This is partially because we focus on
differentiated learning and instruction, and also because personally I look at
real life problem solving with my students and try to incorporate that into my
lessons.
Our academic standards are rigorous and I make an effort to
communicate these expectations at the beginning of each lesson and project by
communicating the learning objectives very clearly. In the blog post that
corresponds to the first video on Roller Coaster Physics (found here: http://pilotrobertmace.edu.glogster.com/roller-coaster-lab/),
the lessons outlined are quite similar to the expectations I set in my
classroom. This is not only the way we
operate in mathematics, but also in drama.
To use drama as an example, I teach a unit on “Theater of the
Oppressed” to my tenth grade students where I teach the students a form of
non-violent, respectful communication to resolve conflict. The theater is a
framework for learning behavior and non-verbal communication, which is then
extended into verbal communication through other activities. One of the key
deliverables is a journal they need to create. I also have them come up with
real-life situations where someone is being oppressed, both in their own lives
as well as on a global level, in order to have them associate their thoughts
from the unit on real-life skills and problem solving.
Before the unit begins, I list out the deliverables and a rubric
for assessment. There is a high degree of possibility for individual variation
each time, but the expectations are very clear as to what needs to happen by
the end of the unit. I allow them to take their own roads to reach the end
point, but they understand where that end point lies throughout the process.
Thanks
for joining me on this analysis and following my blog. As I said, please let me
know your thoughts in the comments, I’d love to hear whether you agree or
disagree.
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