TWHweek7pages36-103(up to chapter 14)
Consider your content area and a situation in which a student was NOT motivated to learn the content. Remember what Erin did with "hooking" her students into reading Romeo and Juliet. Consider what she did. Also, why would you think it is helpful for students to experience the "real thing" (note - learning retention is much higher (80%) by "doing"- rather than reading or hearing (5-10%). What were some ways that Erin provided these learning opportunities? TWH Week 7 pages 36 - 103
Since I am going into Spanish Education, I have to anticipate that there will be students that are not interested. One example I can think of that would give students first person experience, is if I had them actually apply their Spanish outside of the classroom. Say I was doing a vocabulary lesson on food. To follow Erin's model of making her students learn by "doing," I could take my students on a field trip to an authentic Mexican restaurant. They would be required to read the Spanish version of the menu, and obviously order in Spanish. I think that that activity would help my students to see how relevant the information I am teaching is, and how to apply it first hand. I also think that especially for a language, students need to experience the "real thing" by speaking and practicing. Erin provided these "doing" experiences for her students by taking them on field trips that were relevant to the subject matter. Also, she had them look critically into readings to turn them into their own language to better understand. I could use that strategy by having my students translate short stories from Spanish to English or vice-versa. Also, I could have students do a food demo in Spanish to go along with my food vocabulary theme. I agree that it is very important to keep students engaged by doing, rather than sitting and listening.
ReplyDeleteAs a future Early Childhood Educator, I have learned a lot about emergent curriculum. Emergent Curriculum is a way of creating lessons and preparing curriculum based on the student’s interests. To find what the student is interested in, it requires a good amount of observation, documentation, and brainstorming. The teacher must be flexible and patient as they wait for curriculum ideas to emerge. Early Childhood curriculum, therefore, is different from older grades and more complex subjects; because teachers don’t necessarily need to “hook” the lesson plan to get the child interested in the subject matter. Rather the emergent curriculum starts with the children’s interests based on the observations the teacher has made. As an early childhood educator it is really important to find material based on the child’s interest so they will be motivated to learn. If they are not motivated, then I am not choosing curriculum they are interested in. I think this is similar to Erin’s “hooking” the students into reading Romeo and Juliet. Although they might not have been particularly interested in Romeo and Juliet, she was able to observe their interests and behaviors and find common ground to make it relevant and interesting. Erin had noticed riots on campus between local gangs and it encouraged her to compare the civil strife with Romeo and Juliet. She had the kids engage in an exercise to see how language had changed over the years. They did a play on words with the word, “Ho,” and compared it with today’s meaning and years ago meaning. Then she put Romeo and Juliet’s dilemma into perspective by questioning what would happen if Maria, a Latino, and Henry, and African American, were to get together. The class snickered at this remark, and said it would be bad news. After she had got the students interested in the play, she had them rewrite the scenes into contemporary slang so they could find meaning in the words Shakespeare was trying to convey. Then she showed the movie of Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo. The students were able to relate stating, “Shit goes down every day and people just look the other way.” Erin brought her brother, Chris, in to share his stories about the time he served in Sarajevo. The activities, movie, and guest-speaker helped the students experience the real deal and make Shakespeare’s play relate to their own lives, which would help them retain the information longer. If they had simply just read the play, they likely wouldn’t have been engaged, and no connections would have been formed. I think it is extremely helpful for students to experience the “real thing.”
ReplyDeleteAs we have discussed in EDTE 200, it is important to transfer, which means you apply previous knowledge to learning in a new situation. To improve students transfer, it is important to have students generate applications and examples, give opportunities to practice skills, show transfer across different subject areas, learn by doing, and provide real world examples by taking advantage of field trips. As noted, students retain a much higher percentage of information if they are learning by doing, rather than learning by reading or hearing. When you do a hands-on activity you are able to make explicit connections. When you are going on field trips, you are able to see what is actually happen. Students simply remember information more actively in this manner than in any other learning module, so it is important to take advantage of it. Erin Gruwell took full advantage of learning by doing and going on field trips, so that her students would make connections to the materials and remember them. For example, she went on a field trip to see the movie, Schindler’s List, to learn about the holocaust and intolerance. This helped the students relate the intolerance in their everyday lives, and how they can relate it to their writing. After their trip made the newspaper, Ron from U.C. Irvine asked the students to come to a symposium to follow up with Thomas Keneally, who was the author of Schindler’s list. They shared their stories with him, and he inspired them to write their own stories. This information was coming from a successful person, which inspired the students to make meaning of their lives. Then the students were invited to go on a field trip to meet Steven Spielberg. Erin made the students earn the trip by writing about their journeys. They had just finished reading The Odyssey and she wanted them to write their own personal odysseys. Then they went on a trip to the Tolerance Museum. She had the students write essays about inspiring people who have overcome adversity. All of the students had endured hardship, and after writing their essays, they would follow up with going to speak with a panel of Holocaust survivors to compare how they had also overcome adversity. To help the students with their essays, Erin put together a Sandwich lesson. She used props to show the students how to write a good essay. By engaging the students she allowed them to make connections for future references when writing an essay. Erin provided lots of “hands-on/doing” activities to provide more significant learning opportunities, and the students responded in a positive way and appeared to really understand and retain the material.
ReplyDeleteI have recently decided to go into Integrated Mathematics, although, knowing this may not be the easiest field to motivate students I am very excited for the challenge. I know I will have a majority of students that will definitely not enjoy the subject and then I will have a good few that will love it. I feel like it is either hit or miss, and from personal experience in the past I can relate to the students that struggled with math, until I found that teacher that changed everything for me. Obviously, changing my opinion about the subject today. I want to be that teacher and follow Erin’s model of making her students learn by doing because I would love to take my students on field trips that relate to math, but through research it is very tough to find something that actually relates to the matter you may be teaching at that time. The few things I found that could be beneficial for my students were a field trip to a ball game, therefore, the students could record statistics at the event, or even simply taking them to a tall landmark such as a nearby building and ask the students to calculate the height of the building by using trigonometry. Although, if the school I worked in couldn’t financially support the field trips I would do anything just like Erin to give my students something they may not get to experience at home.
ReplyDeleteWhen Erin took her students to meet Spielberg, she knew it would be an incredible opportunity for her students and it would remind them of how far they had come in that year. Erin said when she left Spielberg’s theater she felt like her students and herself could do just about anything. Erin did more than field trips she used hands on methods in class to get her students more involved by encouraging her students in a positive way. I want my students to get everything out of their field trip experiences because I believe it will help them not only in their everyday life, but also later on in the “real world”.
Going into Integrated Language Arts, I can relate well to Erin Gruwell as she is in my field. She has had a vast amount of experience in having to motivate the students into not only understanding the material but in reading the texts, such as Romeo and Juliet. Gruwell faced a difficult task of being able to get her students involved with the play by bringing in their own life experiences. She made the work come alive for them by putting the play into the context of the their own life. The language of the play, as Gruwell stated, caused a barrier for the students in learning. Erin engaged the students by not only teaching her something, but by helping them in analyzing their own language.
ReplyDeleteShe took Romeo and Juliet and put it into the context and situations that they would understand to the play. Her students began to learn and thrive because Gruwell made it applicable to them because they were doing instead of hearing the teacher talk.
I think for me as a teacher, like Gruwell I will be faced with having to bring the students into a book or content that they may not understand or appear outdated to them and bring it into context like Erin did by making it be more real to them. I think it is helpful for the students to experience the real thing because it becomes more than just a book but they feel as though they can learn to use what they know of real life and see the ideas in the text that go beyond just the page.
When students are doing rather than just sitting and listening, what they learned stands out to them much more. I could have the students act out Romeo and Juliet and bring them into the emotion of the characters, into their mindset and thus make the characters more real to them. Erin used field trips and modern music to influence the students, by taking them out of the classroom and bring the play into real life, she gave them something to take away that wasn't just the facts from the play, but life advise.
Learning by doing instead of just reading the text gave, Erin the chance to reach out past being a teacher. It gave them the chance to learn in positive ways and draw them in with the visit to the Holocaust museum to see for themselves the history and relate it back to their own life. They see that the people in the books and stories they read are not that different from them, and by taking them out of the classroom and by doing instead of just listening, Gruwell created lasting memories and gave them experiences that went further than the book could have.
Since I am going to be a math teacher my students will always be doing the "real thing" because I believe you cannot learn how to do math just by reading about it. In the book Erin helps the students create a better sense of learning by making them act out the play, "Romeo and Juliet," which I feel helped them retain all the information in it better. The way I see it is like going to an actual theater to watch a play. Whenever I went to a theater with my school I always found the play more interesting than just reading the book. I would always have a visual image of each character so I would know which person we are talking about when it came time to discuss the play. Then there was the part of the book when Erin was teaching the students about the Holocaust, and she felt that they needed to see this in real life so she took them to the museum of the Holocaust. That really helped them connect with the subject that they were learning about because they actually met a woman who survived the Holocaust and she told them about her personal story. The realized that they see this kind of violence happen everyday in their own neighborhoods and that is what really helped them connect the information to their own lives. Then Erin actually found a way to take the students on another field trip to see "Schindler's List" the movie. This also helped the students learn more about the Holocaust and keep them interested in the material. Many of the students loved the movie and it gave them another perspective to look out of about the tragic event. All of these interesting ways of connecting material helped the students to be engaged in the learning and connect the information better than just reading out of a history book. I know that when I become a teacher I'm not going to have my students just sit and learn about math by taking notes. I want to engage them all and motivate them just like Gruwell does with her students in the book.
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