Today it occurred to me that we really need to focus on how to speak politely to students. I feel like we bark orders at children, ridicule them in minor ways in front of their peers etc. on a daily basis, and they're expected to comply with whatever we say. Even though the students were compliant and nobody talked back, a bit of courtesy would have gone a long way in class today.
What else do we tell them? We won't grade their papers if they have their name incorrectly, they'll get a detention if they're standing at their seat instead of sitting, etc. I'm definitely not for leniency in most things, but really -- what kind of learning goals are we accomplishing here?
I was totally thrilled this morning to be given my own reading group. I have the next to the lowest readers, four of them. We began reading a true "lost in the wilderness" story. I helped them situate it first -- it took us awhile to discover it was set in 1939. We were all talking about how cell phones wouldn't have worked etc. We also talked about where Maine was on the map. I might just bring in a map next time and maybe look up some stats for the mountain we were reading about. They all seemed quite willing to read and answer questions in the small group.
No comments:
Post a Comment