What skills do I want my students to have and how can I facilitate them through my curriculum that I have to teach? How do I find out the “big picture” of my six units?
I recognize my greatest fear came true for my classroom: I am a presenter of information and not a facilitator any more. This saddens me and I want to get back to my roots, the teacher I was when I first walked into my classroom young and and up for an adventure. Back then, I did not bend to what the parents wanted to see in my classroom or to what I felt I should be doing in my classroom compared to others.
Over the last few days (can it only be four days?!?!), I started thinking about how to reclaim my classroom from myself. With my burning question in mind, I have begun to set goals for my program, my first step is to set up a road map. I know what I want. What do I need? How am I going to get there? I need to restructure my program to be a facilitator. I need to skim through Invitations, and start reading the books that Kathryn recommended to me. I need to start looking at my curriculum for the semester and figure out how to integrate the skills into the program.My goal? To create students that know how to observe through a critical eye and communicate about their learning experiences in meaningful ways while recognising their interests, needs, and wants as a learner.
So my first thoughts were to make a list of what I do now and what I want to keep and reformat to put the learning in the hands of my students.
Poems: First off, I want to make sure that I read a poem a day out loud to my students, just for exposure. (see Reggie Routeman and Poetry 180) Give the students the text and leave it at that. I think it is important for my students to learn how to listen and how to appreciate different styles of texts. As for the teaching of poetry, I will incorporate David’s demo, with a smaller amount of poems than I usually use and not worry about covering the “classics”, but in finding poems that engage my students. I will ask my older students for any recollections that they enjoyed and see if they would present them to the younger students. I also will not be worried that the young ones love to read only Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky. I will find shorter and fun poems that they will enjoy and slowly the samples will change as the years progress. I realised now that it is a natural process and II had been forcing my students to take on more poets than they were ready to and not having good discussions about them so I am really excited about revamping this aspect of my curriculum
Public Speaking: I want all of my student to feel comfortable talking in front of a group of their peers. I would like to achieve this goal through reciting poetry then move on to oral reading passages and also attempt a debate (some of my students want to have one). I think that it is important for people to be able to form an opinion and be able to defend their point.
Collaboration: through writing group and just about every other activity. I need to go back to making sure that I dedicate at least one day a week to writing and also give the students time to have feedback to the draft. I know that some kids are a lot slower than others, but I can figure out a way to have drafts they can look at while others are writing. Great examples from the Office Supply Store article. I also need to keep things at our school budget so multiple copies of every writing assignment are not possible. Google docs will really help for me!
Organization and Personal Responsibility: ?
Do I need to have an independent reading program and a class book or should I just combine the two programs? Should I pull selections for them to pick one? I do wonder how I can expose the students to different cultures if I am not putting a selection of texts in front of them.
I still feel like a fish floundering out of the water. I’m ready to start researching the fantastic recommendations that I have received. Feel free to pass on more! I’m making a list that I will check more than twice.
No comments:
Post a Comment