This week’s reading were focused on the importance of community in learning. Chapter 7: Building a Community of Learners in Daniels & Zemelman discussed building a community by making material relevant to student interests. It outlines five main strategies to accomplish this. One that I think is most important is making your classroom a safe place for students to take academic risks. Quiet students are often the ones that ‘fall through the cracks’ because they are too shy to bring up questions or concepts they don’t understand. For me particularly as a physics teacher, because success in physics has been correlated to tolerance for academic failure. Many physics problems don’t have an obvious correct approach so its important to feel comfortable starting the problem without knowing if it’s the correct solution. It’ll also be easy to show how I, myself, commonly hit ‘dead ends’ before reversing and trying a different method and finally reaching a solution. D&Z also mentions the importance of sharing personal struggles in that manner. I thought most strategies covered were natural to use in a physics class. There’s a few science magazines that would be easy to bring into class and have students read. They can pick which magazines or articles to engage in and share their understanding with the class. It would also be a good opportunity for book clubs, as suggested in this chapter.
Fitzgerald & Grave covered useful reading supports for all types of students. The importance of scaffolding is being able to increase the difficulty of material students can read and understand. The scaffolding experience involves a set of pre-reading, during-reading, and post-reading activities and can be used on a various types of text. This may mean having a smaller focus for certain students, but better for those students to have a manageable task they can accomplish versus feeling overwhelmed and retaining little from the learning experience.
Hart & Risley studied the effects of poverty on student’s academic growth. They started with vocabulary in young children during the start of their language development. They noticed that vocabulary size and frequency used already showed disparities when children turned 3. They figured that the amount of disparity already was equivalent to about 150,000 words per week for the welfare child compared to the child of a professional family. The conclusion of this information was to stress the need for intervention early in a child’s life- otherwise intervention is unlikely succeed in closing the gap.
I’m glad that you focused on one of the biggest issues that teachers and schools face today: safety. Here, we aren’t talking about physical safety, but the safe environment for students to open up and take risks in the classroom and within the school environment. Quiet students do not raise their hands, avoid eye contact when possible, and are afraid to speak up. I think you make a valid point that these are the students who tend to fall through the cracks. I see how in physics that there is more than one way to come up with an answer, and being a high school math teacher, I have the same problems and challenges that can be answered in more than one correct way. I think with our subjects, it is also important to show students that we too get road blocks when performing a problem, and we make mistakes. We are all human, and a way we can learn is through our mistakes. I think you hit on another good point which is bringing in material from the real world into the classroom atmosphere. There are some significant studies and accomplishments in science, mathematics, and specifically physics that can make a class and students a little more interesting and exciting.
ReplyDeleteScaffolding is a term we have heard and learned about in education courses for many years now. However, I think Fitzgerald and Grave make it hit home a little more by that fact that they give examples on how to incorporate the three stages mentioned in the response: pre-reading, during-reading, and post-reading. I agree with you that it is important to have a manageable task than to feel completely overwhelmed by an activity with little retaining knowledge from the experience.
The 30 Million word gap article was very insightful, and as you mention, it talks about the vocabulary of young children and how it derives from their parents’ vocabulary words. The conclusion that is pointed out and stressed is the fact that parents need to intervene and interact with their child. As you mention here, otherwise, the will quickly fall behind and get left in the gap.
Also, I forgot to add some suggestions!
ReplyDeleteI think that you could be really supportive in your physics class! Don't be afraid to make a mistake. My kids love to see when I write the wrong letter down. It gives them a sense of I'm human and mess up. I learn from it and move on! I also think that you could find some awesome physics article for your students to read besides a textbook or a hand out. I think you could really excel with this in your area, and I hope you do in your teaching career!