October 6th 2008

Chapter 5
I liked how it compared the two teachers and then said, “The difference was that the first teacher taught algebra. The second teacher taught me German.” I think that is an important capability. Our students want us to invest in them and be interested in how they are doing! We need to work with our students the best we can to teach them in a way that they learn the best. That can get tricky when you have 30 students, but as a teacher, we need to do our best to work with each child so they know we care and believe they can succeed!
We need to engage our students into our lessons. I liked the list of ways to do this: novelty, cultural significance, personal interest, personal relevance or passion, emotional connection, product focus, potential to make a contribution or link with something greater than self, and choice. I think that these things are truly important and using these engaging factors can create a great lesson! We want to keep our lessons demanding but not overwhelmingly hard for our students. When an assignment is demanding and they accomplish it, they feel great about of themselves and feel like they can do other things that are hard for them. But if we give them an assignment that is overwhelming, then there is a good chance the student might give up!

Chapter 6
When the student’s work is focused, important and engaging, the students will have an easier time knowing what the most important information is and getting their work done. In return, the teacher will know more clearly what the student understands and how they focus best.
A great way of teaching is to use real life scenarios. Teach the students about traffic accident patterns. After learning about them your students can devise a solution to the problem. Not only does this teach your students problem solving skills, but how to get involved in the community. You can take this project another step further and have your students prepare presentations to present their ideas to the City Council. They can either present them to the class, or you can have the City Council come to your class and listen to the presentations. This teaches the students how to create a presentation and to be persuasive with their ideas to important people.
I don’t remember ever doing that in any of my classes, but we did take on adult type rolls. I remember being the store keeper in our classroom store. I had to apply for the job and then I was in charge of making sure it all happened right. I was so excited to have the job, I thought it was so cool!