PG's Ponderings

This particular technique involves a four-question set that gets students actively responding to the material they are studying. They analyse, reflect, relate, and question via these four prompts: Identify one important concept, research finding, theory, or idea ... that you learned while completing this activity. Why do you believe that this concept, research finding, theory, or idea ... is important? Apply what you have learned from this understanding to the context of the question? What question(s) has the activity raised for you? What are you still wondering about? [You might need to prohibit the answer "nothing".] Key steps to follow: Which details seem significant? Why? What is the significance of this detail? What does it mean? What might it mean? How do the details fit together? What do they have in common? What does this pattern of details mean? What else might this pattern suggest? What other explanation could be given? What details do not seem to fit? What other pa...

This term we will start on the three key focus points for students preparation for the examinations and the ending of the course programmes: Listening – listen to where your students are at in their examination preparation or in the course completion. Questioning – what do your students need, what are they asking for, and what questions are you asking them. Analysing - identifying, clarifying and developing solutions and answers to the questions – fine tuning the learning and the examination preparation. To analyse something is to ask what that something means. It is to ask how something does what it does or why it is as it is. Analysis is the kind of think-ink you'll most often be asked to do in your work life and in school; it is not the rarefied and exclusive province of scholars and intellectuals. It is, in fact, one of the most common of our mental activities. Most people already analyse all the time, but they often don't realize that this is what they're doing...

This term we will start on the three key focus points for students preparation for the examinations and the ending of the course programmes: Listening – listen to where your students are at in their examination preparation or in the course completion. Questioning – what do your students need, what are they asking for, and what questions are you asking them. Analysing - identifying, clarifying and developing solutions and answers to the questions – fine tuning the learning and the examination preparation. Communication is a difficult art. Good communication ensures that what is communicated is received in the same manner and tone as was intended, not merely as it was said. The key to good communication is context, i.e. the framework one communicates within. For example, a question may be made in class which each student may perceive very differently, as they will come from very different contexts or starting points. The secret of good communication is to take these differences in c...

Tactics for encouraging a deeper level of listening that also include student accountability: Strategy #1: Say it Once Repeating ourselves in the classroom will produce lazy listening in our students. If kids are accustomed to hearing instructions twice, three times, and even four times, listening the first time around becomes unnecessary. Make this term a one time format, or for those few who forgot to listen, you can advise them to, "ask three, then ask me." Strategy #2: Turn and Talk One way to inspire active listening in your students is to give them a listening task. It might look like this, "I'm going to describe the process of _________. I will pause along the way and ask you to turn to a partner and explain to them what you heard." You can ask students to take turns talking each time you pause, and meanwhile, walk around observing their conversations (also allowing you to check for understanding). Strategy #3: Student Hand Signals Asking students to pay...

The notion of participation is so well entrenched in the collective mind of the teaching profession that I wonder if we have not consciously stopped considering what we are after when we work with a class. (p. 15) Dennis Gioia thinks that most of us are after lots of different students answering and asking questions. It really feels good to see a substantial portion of the class joining in. Indeed, success at achieving class participation is a seductive sort of accomplishment—so seductive that it often leads to a de facto presumption that the class is successful simply because so many people are more actively involved in it. (p. 15) He's got a point. Sometimes it's so difficult to get anyone to participate, that on those days when there's a good amount of discussion, we can't help but feel the class is going well. But if our concern stops with the number of students who speak, we may be valuing quantity over quality. Gioia makes an interesting distinction between partic...