Chapter 10: Going Beyond the Classroom

This chapter deals with how not all learning goes on in classrooms. Sometimes students learn more outside of classes in workplaces or at home. It is important for teachers to try to link the work done at school to things that are happening in students lives outside of school. Many classes are easy to connect to outside events while others are more difficult. When a teacher is able to to connect a class to outside events it gets the students to pay attention and they are better able to comprehend the topic being covered.

I think that this is one of the most important things to do as a teacher. Connecting what you are teaching in a class to what is happening outside of school makes students pay attention. I know that in the classes I have taken I always paid more attention when the teacher was able to connect what we were learning to outside events. History and social science classes are the easiest classes to connect to current events while math and physics are easy to connect to everyday things. I think chemistry is the hardest class to connect because of the lack of mixing chemicals in everyday life.

Chapter 9: When Things Go Wrong

There are many things that can go wrong in a classroom. The mark of a good teacher is not one that never has anything go wrong for them but one that fixes the problems when they go wrong. One problem that happens in a classroom often is when kids start to get discouraged. This can happen for a number of reasons and some times it has nothing to do with classes but it will effect the classes and bring the student's grade down. One way to fence this feeling of discouragement off is to make sure that the student has updates regularly. Throughout the year ask the student how he feels about how he is doing in your class and whether you can do anything differently to help him. The other problem can come when the teacher gets discouraged. This happens often and leads to many new teachers quiting.

I found this chapter to be depressing. It was all about kids acting up and teachers quiting. It did have its good point when it discussed ways to keep kids from getting depressed and teachers from quiting. The part that really interested me was the part about not being a superhero. It's not your job as a teacher to take responsibility for every mistake the students make. You have to know where to draw the line. It is just as important to not give up on kids and always support them. Just by having one teacher believe in them makes a huge difference in a student's life.

Chapter 8:Teaching Teenagers Who Are Still Learning English

This chapter deals with the difficulties that a teacher faces when teaching a class with students that are learning English as a second language. This is a very difficult thing to do because the student is challenged by both the subject and understanding the words used to describe the topic. Some good ideas are to find out about the background of the students and build of from it. Find some area that that student excels in and use that to help make the student feel comfortable. Use the students knowledge of their background to help further the knowledge of the class. Look past the mistakes that they will make in English and show respect when they try to communicate. It's difficult to be in a situation where very few people understand you and ridiculing them for their English mistakes is not going to help them succeed.

I do not have much experience with non-English speaking people because of my Maine upbringing. I did take French in high school and in my senior year I traveled to France. I know how hard it is to be in a place where you do not understand everything going on because everyone is speaking a different language. While I was trying to decipher the language everyone else was taking in the concepts and getting a head of me in the classes I sat in on. I tried to speak but some of the teachers did not give me a chance to make mistakes and I had no way of learning.

Chapter 7: Teaching Difficult Academic Material

Some material is harder to teach than other material because of its content. It is the teacher’s job to make this material just as exciting and motivate students to want to learn it. The first step is to learn what your students already know. This will help you build a base and give you a starting place. Then you should link the new, harder material to the old material that the students already know. This will help keep the material interesting. You should also break down the new topic and teach it in smaller chunks instead of all at once. This makes the information easier to learn and if you teach it in a new, exciting way then your students will be more likely to pay attention.

I think that it is very important to give some sort of pre-test before the course starts. I have had a couple of teachers do this and I find that it helps me, as a student, see where the class is going. Teaching in new and exciting ways is what teaching is really all about. If you’re not able to teach something so that students will relate to it and find it interesting then maybe it is time to retire. I hope to bring excitement into my classroom everyday and have students that really want to take my course and get interested in the material.

Chapter 6: Motivation and Boredom

In our society most teenagers go to school and understand that it is important even if they do not want to go. They understand that school is important for social and academic growth and they see it as a way to survive in society. Even if students want to go to school it can lead to boredom and teachers must make sure that it does not. Kids can recognize when a teacher is passionate and wants to teach. These kinds of teachers get kids motivated and the teacher can get the kids to learn. It is also important for teachers to discuss issues that kids care about and connect the teaching to the real world. Nobody is going to want to learn if the lesson will not help them in the real world. Other ways to keep students motivated are to make sure that you give group work, make sure the students understand the topic, care about the students, and do not assign overwhelming amounts of homework. It is very important to make sure that students are motivated because otherwise it would be impossible to teach anything.

I found the part where they discuss that kids actually do want to go to school to be accurate. Even though it may seem that kids do not want to go to school I think that most teenagers do. They really do see it as a place where they can learn and grow. The social connections that they develop are reason enough for many students; however, it is important for teachers to make it so that students are coming for more than just the social factor and that they are actually learning. I also found the list of what the students like to read to be interesting. I like to read many of the same types of books and I felt like doing a survey to collect data so that I could run some analysis on it.

Chapter 5: Teaching to the Individual, Working with the Group

This chapter starts with describing a couple of the different types of students a typical classroom will include. This list includes students that will tune out, that know the information but will not raise their hand, that always raise their hand, that day dream during class, that cheat to get by, that joke around, and that do all the work but may not excel. There are many reasons why a student may or may not volunteer information during class. Sometimes it’s because the student does not know the information but many times it’s because they fear getting it wrong even when they are right, or they may fear getting it right and looking like a know-it-all. Then end of the chapter dealt with ways to make sure group work is going smoothly. You have to make sure that the project you have them working on is suitable for a group and that everyone will have work to do. It is also important to make sure that everyone is actually working and that a few of the students are not doing all of the work. When it comes to grading; however, it is good to remember that progress is individual and that some students may not learn best while in groups.

I found the conversation about the different types of students in the classroom to be intriguing. Looking back over my time in school I recognize students that fit each of these categories. What I find more intriguing is that I see myself falling into each of these categories at different times in my classes. In my Math courses I went through the hand-waver and the workhorse. In Physics I was defiantly the goof-off and I always felt like the con-artist in English. It’s strange how one student can have all the mixes that you would find in a classroom full of kids.

Focus the Nation

I attended the presentation entitled "Global Warming – The Clock is Ticking." I found that I did not really learn anything from the presentation. The beginning of the talk came across as being the same as any other global warming speach. The started by saying this is what we know will happen if we do not change our ways, and then proceeded to show pictures of Manhattan, Florida, and Portland underwater. The second part of the presentation was slightly better because they actually focused on some stuff that we could do to help slow down global warming. I liked that they added this part since the movie An Inconvenient Truth. I always felt that that movie was really lacking because it said that there was a problem but gave no plans for correcting the problem. I did learn a few things from the presentation
1) There was a mini-ice age about 1300 years ago where the world tempurature dropped 4 degrees and civilization was not wiped out.
2) If ice on land melts then the ocean levels will go up but if ice already in the water melts then ocean levels will stay the same.
3) When ice melts and more water is opened up the melting process intensifies because the water conducts heat better than the ice.

In my classroom I plan to use "scrap" paper to do most of the in class work. I will ask the computer center to provide me with paper that people print on that they never use. I could also do a project where the students figure out how much energy is harnessed using water, wind, solar etc. This would use a knowledge of numbers and conversions as well as helping teach the students about renewable energy.

Web 2.0 Educator

I read the blog entitled Science is Fun with the Right Teacher. I found that the author of the blog used the blog mostly as a place to post homework assignments or to post links to websites if the student wants to investigate a topic closer. When I'm a teacher I want to stay away from using a blog for just homework. If I make a blog for my students I want to make sure that I have a lot of fun things to do on the blog that pertain to math. The creator of the blog did use labels effectively and I found it easy to move around his blog and find what I was interested in. I really like how he posted pictures taken from class of students in lab. However, in this day and age I hope he got permission from the students to post their pictures on the internet. I liked some of the interactive sites he had linked in his blog and I found them informative and fun to look at. Overall I think he has a well organized blog but I think he could add more to it to make it more interesting.