This week's strategies do not really apply to what I teach: physical education, health, and broadcast/film. The only time I use "Recognizing similarities and differences" is when I am trying to get a student to understand that the sign of ultimate participation in PE is sweating, red face, deep breathing, etc. versus no sweat, regular breathing and normal color in the face (I use heart rate in this example). I don't think that is what the chapter was really talking about. I have not used "Generating Testing and Hypothesis" formally, and I am fairly confident I won't in the future. The resources in both chapters 9 and 11 are ones that I can pass on to teachers, though. I many times get asked questions about "the best way to. . . " so any time I can bank resources and find a way for others to benefit is good.
The Homework and Practice chapter (10) was probably the most useful. I do not generally give homework because I know the students in my school are already overloaded. The gauge our school uses is 15 minutes of homework per class. This usually means each student in 6th through 8th grade could have 1.5 or more hours per night. I am convinced that not all of this homework is relevant. I think that some of our teachers give homework because it's just what teachers do, and they do not think about the objectives and goals of the homework. According to the website, http://www.nasponline.org/resources/home_school/homework.aspx, only 10 minutes of homework per grade should be assigned. That means 6th grade should have no more than an hour, 7th 70 minutes, and 8th 80 minutes. Even the grade school kids in our system have at least one hour per night. Excessive if you ask me.
All that being said, now that I am teaching a broadcasting/film class, students do have to find time outside of class to complete projects. This is mainly because students are writing and developing their own 5 minutes "short" so their plots and stories may need locations outside of school. Students in class are just now getting to that point. It is not homework per se, but if students want to meet the rubric requirements, they will need to do what is necessary to complete the film. I really enjoyed the resources in this chapter. I have bookmarked several such as Writeboard, Backpack, and Campfire. We have been having problems at our school embedding in wikis and with sharing some google docs, so maybe these other resources have less hassle to using them collaboratively.
Tam,
ReplyDeleteGreat comments on the homework idea. I agree that schools and mainly teachers have this concept that there must be a certain amount of homework in order for the student to understand the work. This is backwards and the teacher might think more about how to make that homework the most effective in the learning process rather than how long it takes. Does the student understand the material? If the answer is yes and it took that child two minutes, great. If the student took 20 minutes to fully understand it, isn't the fact the child understood the process more important than how long it took?
Great post.