Teaching since Fall 2001 – 3rd year in 2nd grade

Posts tagged ‘Helpless handraisers’

Tools for Teachers Study Guide Questions for chapters 8 – 10

1) What is the most efficient way to create comprehension and long-term memory during the teaching of a lesson? (pages 74-76)

Break the lesson up into small pieces and have students see it, talk about it, and do each step individually

2) How does the cognitive overload typical of Bop ’til You Drop teaching feed into the dependency of the helpless handraisers? (pages 80-81)

By creating a cognitive over load, Bop ’til You Drop teaching gives the helpless handraisers a valid excuse to need more help, and doesn’t allow them time to process and understand the concept.

3) What is the role of Structured Practice in skill building? (pages 78-80)

Structured practice preempts bad habits from even starting. By walking through the concept slowly and practicing each step with teacher’s guidance good habits are formed. I can see how this will work with math concepts, and even some science procedures. I do not understand how these step by step handholding procedures will work when dealing with higher level concepts. This seems like spoon feeding kids information to be regurgitated later.

4) How do you “do” a concept? (pages 79-80)

Doing a concept in my class is fairly easy. Muscle memory is very important in using technology. Things like the feel of how the mouse moves as you move the cursor across the screen are very important. My main problem is breaking down the steps into small enough steps for the students to learn and understand.

5) What are the advantages of having students interact in pairs rather than in groups of four?

The author feels set by students working in pairs traveling groups of four they get more time working with and manipulating information.

6) How would you check students’ work during each Say, See, Do cycle in your subject area? How might you speed up work check as you move among the students?

I checked students work by either spinning around my chair to see their screens, or using the chair’s wheels and scooting behind the students to see their screens. Due to the level of the screens and injury to my shoulder I cannot walk around the room and see their screens properly.

The easiest way to speed up checking the students work would be to have software that allows me to see each screen on my computer, to take over students’ computers to point to where they need to being, or freeze to computer and the student is doing something incorrect or forbidden.

7) What would your students like to do as sponge PATs? (pages 94-97)

Kindergarten and first grade like to do www.pbskids.org or www.starfall.com. Last year second grade was really into various math websites that I have bookmarked for them. Third grade had some students who like the math or game web sites. Other third graders liked playing with the Moodle website. Most of my fourth and fifth graders liked changing their icons and using the message boards and chat features of Moodle. Third, fourth, and fifth grades also enjoyed a typing games web site that I’d found.

This year I am planning for third, fourth, fifth grade to sit down directly at the computers and go to the Moodle website. When they log in there will either be a typing lesson or a podcast for them to complete. Because of our scheduling I’ll be taking the class before them to the bathroom. By getting the students started directly, when their teacher brings into the room this will cut down behavior problems. I’m not sure what I want to do with kindergarten, first, and second grade. If they’re seated directly at the computer, they will began playing and this will be hard to redirect when I get back from dropping another class off. It they stand in the hallway, they will disrupt the third grade classes located in my pod. Sitting on the floor which we did last year, has many problems especially the touching each other. This fall I am going to look the space again and see if I can put X’s on the floor for them to sit on. If that seems to crowded and thinking about having the class before turn the chairs backwards. This means when the students sit down they’ll be facing me and the projection wall instead of their computer screens.

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