This chapter begins by talking about students' knowledge and experiences with texts. Students who can relate their real life experiences to a text that is taught in the classroom can have a greater advantage to comprehending the information opposed to other students who are reading it for the first time. This is where the motivation from the teacher should take place, if a teacher wants to "really" teach something it will shine through onto the students.
I remember when I was in the eighth grade and my English teacher was showing a video on the Holocaust, I was extremely interested and knew what was going on in the video. I would say over half of the class was not quite as interested as I was considering they were not even paying attention. I feel that this video could have be beneficial for every student in the class, yet my teacher didn't seem to care if we watched it or not. His first problem was not showing any motivation in watching the video or learning about the Holocaust. Anywho...even if a student has prior knowledge of a subject it does not mean that he or she will be not be interested in learning new things and ideas. It is my job as a teacher to take different strategies and try to relate them to each student.
In this day and age technology is becoming the backbone in every classroom. I personally feel this is a great resource to have use of. However, one must be able to tell a credible site from one that is not. Last semester in clincials I was fortunate enough to visit a 7th grade literaure class. On one of the days that I was there, the students used the Promethean board for presentations. In every presentation the students used Wikipedia as the main resource. Wikipedia sometimes has a lot of information, but it can't be said that it is all true. I was taken back by a teacher allowing this site to be used. I feel that teachers' need to be knowledgeable about all resources that they plan to use in their classroom.
Overall, I feel that texts are important to teach from in the classroom, however, one book should not be the only text students are learning from. If I was to teach a lesson on Spain, and in my Social Studies textbook there is only half a chapter on Spain. I would want to integrate other books,digital texts and real life experiences to the lesson. My goal is to give my students a well rounded education.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I wonder if your teacher seemed unmotivated to watch the video because he had seen it so many times before. I understand why you were interested in the subject matter, which just proves that when teachers connect content to students' interests, the more likely the students will be engaged in learning. I also cannot believe that the teacher let her students use wikipedia. I have decided that before I teach my students how to research they will learn about finding credible sources first. I think that credible sources is a crucial foundation for research, and as teacher we cannot assume that our students know how to find reliable sources.
ReplyDelete